[Illustration: CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU
TRIPLE PORTRAIT BY PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAGNE]
CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU
BY
ELEANOR C. PRICE
AUTHOR OF “A PRINCESS OF THE OLD WORLD”
“Il est dans l’histoire de grandes et énigmatiques figures
sur lesquelles le ‘dernier mot’ ne sera peut-être jamais dit....
Telle est, assurément, celle du Cardinal de Richelieu.”
BARON A. DE MARICOURT.
WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS
SECOND EDITION
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published_ _September 19th 1912_
_Second Edition_ _1912_
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
“Temerarious indeed must he appear who attempts to comprehend in so
small a space the admirable actions of a Hero who filled the whole
earth with the fame of his glory, and who, by the wonders he worked
in our own days, effaced the most lofty and astounding deeds of Pagan
demigods and illustrious Personages of Antiquity. But what encourages
me to attempt a thing so daring is the preciousness of the material
with which I have to deal; being such that it needs neither the
workman nor his art for the heightening of its value. So that, however
little I may say of the incomparable and inimitable actions of the
great Armand de Richelieu, I shall yet say much; knowing also that if
I were to fill large volumes, I should still say very little.”
Although the courtly language of the Sieur de la Colombière,
Gentleman-in-Ordinary to Louis XIV., who wrote a _Portrait_ of Cardinal
de Richelieu some years after his death, may appear extravagant
to modern minds, there is no denying that he is justified on one
point--the marvellous interest of his subject.
Few harder tasks could be attempted than a complete biography of
Richelieu. It would mean the history of France for more than fifty
years, the history of Europe for more than twenty: even a fully
equipped student might hesitate before undertaking it. At the same
time, Richelieu’s personality and the times in which he lived are so
rich in varied interest that even a passing glance at both may be found
not unwelcome. If excuse is needed, there is that of Monsieur de la
Colombière: “Pour peu que j’en parle, j’en dirai beaucoup.”
There are many good authorities for the life of Cardinal de Richelieu
and for the details of his time, among which the well-known and
invaluable works of M. Avenel and of the Vicomte G. d’Avenel should
especially be mentioned. But any modern writer on the subject must,
first and foremost, acknowledge a deep obligation to M. Hanotaux,
concerning whose unfinished _Histoire du Cardinal de Richelieu_,
extending down to the year 1624, one can only express the hope that its
gifted author may some day find leisure and inclination to complete it.
E. C. P.
CONTENTS
List of Authorities Pages xiii, xiv
PART I
CHAPTER I
The birth of Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu--The position of his
family--His great-uncles--His grandfather and grandmother--His father,
François de Richelieu, Grand Provost of Henry III.--His mother and her
family--His godfathers--The death of his father Pages 1-9
CHAPTER II
Friends and relations--The household at Richelieu--Country life in
Poitou Pages 10-15
CHAPTER III
The University of Paris--The College of Navarre--The Marquis du
Chillou--A change of prospect--A student of theology--The Abbé de
Richelieu at Rome--His consecration Pages 16-25
PART II
CHAPTER I
A Bishop at the Sorbonne--State of France under Henry IV.--Henry
IV., his Queen and his Court--The Nobles and Princes--The unhealthiness
of Paris--The Bishop’s departure Pages 26-37
CHAPTER II
Richelieu arrives at Luçon--His palace and household--His work in
the diocese--His friends and neighbours Pages 38-47
CHAPTER III
“Instructions et Maximes”--The death of Henry IV.--The difficult
road to favour--Père Joseph and the Abbey of Fontevrault Pages 48-62
CHAPTER IV
Waiting for an opportunity--Political unrest--The States-General of
1614--The Bishop of Luçon speaks Pages 63-71
CHAPTER V
Richelieu appointed Chaplain to Queen Anne--Discontent of the
Parliament and the Princes--The royal progress to the south--Treaty of
Loudun--Return to Paris--Marie de Médicis and her favourites--The
young King and Queen--The Duc de Luynes--Richelieu as negotiator
and adviser--The death of Madame de Richelieu Pages 72-87
CHAPTER VI
A contemporary view of the state of France--Barbin, Mangot, and
Richelieu--A new rebellion--Richelieu as Foreign Secretary--The Abbé
de Marolles--Concini in danger--The death of Concini--The fall of the
Ministry--Horrible scenes in Paris--Richelieu follows the Queen-mother
into exile Pages 88-100
CHAPTER VII
Richelieu at Blois--He is ordered back to his diocese--He writes a book
in defence of the Faith--Marriage of Mademoiselle de Richelieu--The
Bishop exiled to Avignon--Escape of the Queen-mother from
Blois--Richelieu is recalled to her service Pages 101-115
CHAPTER VIII
The Treaty of Angoulême--The death of Henry de Richelieu--The meeting at
Couzières--The Queen-mother at Angers--Richelieu’s influence for
peace--The battle of the Ponts-de-Cé--Intrigues of the Duc de
Luynes--Marriage of Richelieu’s niece--The campaigns in Béarn and
Languedoc--The death of Luynes--The Bishop of Luçon becomes a Cardinal
Pages 116-130
PART III
CHAPTER I
Cardinal de Richelieu--Personal descriptions--A patron of the
arts--Court intrigues--Fancan and the pamphlets--The fall of the
Ministers--Cardinal de Richelieu First Minister of France Pages 131-142
CHAPTER II
Richelieu’s aims--The English alliance--The affair of the
Valtelline--The Huguenot revolt--The marriage of Madame Henriette--The
Duke of Buckingham Pages 143-157
CHAPTER III
Peace with Spain--The making of the army and navy--The question
of Monsieur’s marriage--The first great conspiracy--Triumph of Richelieu
and death of Chalais Pages 158-175
CHAPTER IV
Two famous edicts--The tragedy of Bouteville and Des Chapelles--The
death of Madame and its consequences--War with England--The
siege of La Rochelle Pages 176-192
CHAPTER V
The Duc de Nevers and the war of the Mantuan succession--The rebellion
in Languedoc--A new Italian campaign--Richelieu as Commander-in-Chief
Pages 193-206
CHAPTER VI
Illness of Louis XIII.--“Le Grand Orage de la Cour.”--The “Day of
Dupes” Pages 207-216
CHAPTER VII
Flight from France of the Queen-mother and Monsieur--New honours for
Cardinal de Richelieu--The fall of the Marillac brothers--The Duc de
Montmorency and Monsieur’s ride to Languedoc--Castelnaudary--The death
of Montmorency--Illness and recovery of the Cardinal Pages 217-233
CHAPTER VIII
The Cardinal and his palaces--The château and town of Richelieu--The
Palais-Cardinal--Richelieu’s household, daily life, and friends--The
Hôtel de Rambouillet--Mademoiselle de Gournay--Boisrobert and the first
Academicians--Entertainments at the Palais-Cardinal--_Mirame_
Pages 234-248
CHAPTER IX
Conquests in Lorraine--The return of Monsieur--The fate of
Puylaurens--France involved in the Thirty Years’ War--Last adventures of
the Duc de Rohan--Defeat, invasion, and panic--The turn of the
tide--Narrow escape of the Cardinal--The flight of the Princes
Pages 249-262
CHAPTER X
Palace intrigues--Mademoiselle de Hautefort--Mademoiselle de la
Fayette--The affair of the Val-de-Grâce--The birth of the Dauphin--The
death of Père Joseph--Difficulties in the Church Pages 263-275
CHAPTER XI
Victories abroad--The death of the Comte de Soissons--Social
triumphs--Marriage of the Duc d’Enghien--The revolt against the
taxes--The conspiracy of Cinq-Mars--The Cardinal’s dangerous illness--He
makes his will--The ruin of his enemies--His return to Paris
Pages 276-290
CHAPTER XII
The Cardinal’s last days--Renewed illness--His death and funeral--His
legacies--The feeling in France--The Church of the Sorbonne
Pages 291-298
INDEX Pages 299-306
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU. Triple Portrait by Philippe de Champagne
(National Gallery) _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
HENRY IV. From an engraving after the picture by François
Porbus 26
CLOISTER AT CHAMPIGNY 34
From a photo by A. Pascal, Thouars.
THE MAJORITY OF LOUIS XIII. (Louis XIII. and Marie de Médicis).
From the picture by Rubens in the Louvre 68
From a photo by Neurdein, Paris.
CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU. Portrait by Philippe de Champagne 132
From a photo by A. Giraudon, Paris.
GASTON DE FRANCE, DUC D’ORLÉANS. From a contemporary
portrait 162
From a photo by Neurdein, Paris.
LOUIS XIII. From a contemporary portrait 188
From a photo by Neurdein, Paris.
THE CHÂTEAU DE RICHELIEU. From an old print 234
THE TOWN OF RICHELIEU. From an old print 238
ANNE OF AUSTRIA. From a miniature in the Victoria and Albert
Museum 268
PORTE DE CHÂTELLERAULT, RICHELIEU 280
From a photo by Imprimerie Photo-Mécanique, Paris.
TOMB OF CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU, by Girardon, in the Church of
the Sorbonne 294
From a photo by Neurdein, Paris.
CHIEF AUTHORITIES
CONTEMPORARY
_Lettres, Instructions Diplomatiques et Papiers d’État du Cardinal de
Richelieu._ Recueillis et publiés par M. Avenel.
_Mémoires du Cardinal de Richelieu._ Édition Petitot et Monmerqué.
_Mémoires du Cardinal de Richelieu._ New Edition. With Notes, etc.
(Société de l’Histoire de France.) Not completed.
_Mémoires sur la Régence de Marie de Médicis_, par Pontchartrain.
Édition Petitot et Monmerqué.
_Mémoires de Bassompierre._ Édition Petitot et Monmerqué.
_Journal de Pierre de l’Estoile._ Édition Petitot et Monmerqué.
_Mémoires du Marquis de Montglat._ Édition Petitot et Monmerqué.
_Mémoires de Madame de Motteville._ Édition Riaux.
_L’Histoire du Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu._ L. Aubery.
_Testament Politique du Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu._
_Journal de M. le Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu._ 1630, 1631.
_Portraits des Hommes Illustres François._ M. de Vulson, Sieur de la
Colombière.
_Le Véritable Père Joseph, Capucin._ 1704.
_Histoire du Roy Henry le Grand._ Hardouin de Péréfixe.
_Mémoire d’Armand du Plessis de Richelieu, Evêque de Luçon_, 1607 _ou_
1610. Édition Armand Baschet.
_Description de la Ville de Paris._ Germain Brice.
_Les Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux._
Etc., etc.
MODERN
_Histoire du Cardinal de Richelieu._ G. Hanotaux.
_Histoire de France._ H. Martin. Vol. xi.
_Histoire de France._ Michelet. Vols. xiii. and xiv.
_Vie Intime d’une Reine de France, Marie de Médicis._ L. Batiffol.
_Le Roi Louis XIII. à Vingt Ans._ L. Batiffol.
_Louis XIII. et Richelieu._ Marius Topin.
_Richelieu et les Ministres de Louis XIII._ B. Zeller.
_La Noblesse Française sous Richelieu._ Vicomte G. d’Avenel.
_Prêtres, Soldats et Juges sous Richelieu._ Vicomte G. d’Avenel.
_Le Cardinal de Bérulle et le Cardinal de Richelieu._ M. l’Abbé M.
Houssaye.
_Gentilshommes Campagnards de l’Ancienne France._ Pierre de Vaissière.
_Le Père Joseph et Richelieu._ G. Fagniez.
_Madame de Hautefort._ Victor Cousin.
_Madame de Chevreuse._ Victor Cousin.
_Le Règne de Richelieu._ Émile Roca.
_Le Cardinal de Richelieu: Étude Biographique._ L. Dussieux.
_Le Plaisant Abbé de Boisrobert._ Émile Magne.
Etc., etc.
CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU
PART I
EARLY YEARS
1585-1607
CHAPTER I
1585-1590
The birth of Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu--The position of his
family--His great-uncles--His grandfather and grandmother--His father,
François de Richelieu, Grand Provost of Henry III.--His mother and her
family--His godfathers--The death of his father.
In the year 1585, when Elizabeth of England was at the height of her
power, when Mary of Scotland lay in prison within two years of her
death, when Philip of Spain was beginning to dream of the Invincible
Armada, when Henry of Guise and the League were triumphing in France,
the future dominator of European politics was born.
Armand Jean du Plessis, third and youngest son of François du Plessis,
Seigneur de Richelieu, was an infant of no great importance. Even his
birthplace, for a long time, was not known with any certainty.
His family was noble, but not of the higher nobility which governed
provinces, commanded armies, and glittered at Court. He belonged to
that race of French country gentlemen which led a strenuous life in the
sixteenth century, either for good or evil--perhaps mostly for evil.
They were generally poor, proud, and greedy. If, by fair means or
foul, they could capture a rich wife of their own station, so much the
better; if not, they readily sacrificed birth for money, and bestowed
an old name, coat and sword, rough manners and ruinous walls, on some
heiress of the _bourgeoisie_. When the resource of marriage failed,
such a gentleman would turn himself into a mercenary soldier, Catholic
or Huguenot, or creep into Court employment in the shadow of some great
noble of his province; or failing such honest means, he might clap on
a mask and take to highway robbery, rich travellers being better worth
pillaging than the peasants who hid in their hovels as his horse’s
heavy hoofs clanked by. Sometimes Religion herself, or the false
Duessa who personified her in those days, might help a needy gentleman
to a livelihood. There was many an abbot who had never been a monk;
and there were lucky families--that of Du Plessis, for instance--who
possessed a bishopric as provision for a younger son.
The Du Plessis were an old family of Poitou. In that ancient and
famous province they had held several fiefs so far back as the early
thirteenth century; but they were a wandering, fighting race, without
strong attachment, it seems, to their native soil. One of them is said
to have gone to England in the suite of Guy de Lusignan, and to have
married a noble English wife. Another journeyed to Cyprus with the same
distinguished patron. In the Hundred Years War, two Du Plessis brothers
were found fighting on opposite sides, French and English. Pierre,
the elder, head of the less distinguished branch of the family, was a
robber of Church property as well as a traitor to the national cause;
but in the way of morals there was not much to choose between him
and his brother Sauvage, the patriot, in favour of whom their father
threatened to disinherit him.
Sauvage was a man of strong, acquisitive character, and everything
prospered in his hands, though he began his career by carrying off
a younger brother’s wife. It was his son, Geoffroy, who laid the
real foundation of future greatness by his marriage with Perrine
Clérembault, of a good old family, whose brother was Seigneur of
Richelieu. Louis de Clérembault, who held a post in the Court of
Charles VII, left his fortune and estates to François du Plessis, his
sister’s son. The young man not only succeeded to the fortified château
of Richelieu and a good position in his native province, but also to
a connexion with the Court which lasted into the reign of Louis XI,
and which helped him to lift his family a step higher by marrying his
own son, François, to the daughter of Guyon Le Roy, of Chavigny, in
the Forest of Fontevrault, a distinguished courtier, and Vice-Admiral
of France under François I. This François du Plessis de Richelieu was
great-grandfather to the famous Cardinal.
An ecclesiastical turn--for the sake of gain rather than of
godliness--was given to the family by its relationship with that
“true prelate of the Renaissance,” Jacques Le Roy, uncle of Madame
de Richelieu. He was successively Abbot of Villeloing, Cluny, and
St. Florent-de-Saumur, and Archbishop of Bourges, and in him the bad
sixteenth-century alliance between the Church and the world, the
consequence of royal nomination to benefices, might be seen at its most
flourishing point.
He chose three out of his five Richelieu great-nephews to follow in
his footsteps. Two of them rose to be abbot and bishop; the other,
Antoine, took the vows as a monk at Saumur against his will, and after
a short religious life varied by floggings and other punishments for
rebellion, unfrocked himself and ran away to the wars. Known throughout
his military life as “the Monk,” he was a cruel and ferocious soldier.
With his brother François, a man of very different type, he first
saw service in the Italian campaigns under the Maréchal de Montluc.
Both brothers returned to Poitou towards 1560, and both took the
Catholic side in the religious civil war which raged for years in
the miserable western provinces of France, where Protestantism, from
various causes, had taken a firm hold. Attached to the Guise faction,
the brothers became special partisans of the Duc de Montpensier, the
King’s lieutenant in Poitou and their own near neighbour at the Château
de Champigny. His army swept the province with fire and sword, and
among his many fierce and adventurous followers François and Antoine du
Plessis-Richelieu led the way.
The former, however, seems to have been an honest soldier rather than a
bloodthirsty demon. He, nicknamed “_le Sage_” and regretted as “un fort
brave gentilhomme,” lost his life in an expedition against the English,
who had occupied Le Havre. _Le Moine_ survived his brother some years,
and his fame as a fighter became worth a post at Court and a knightly
order. With an ever-growing reputation for vice and violence, he was
killed in a street brawl in Paris--“mort symbolisante à sa vie,” says
the chronicler l’Estoile. His most characteristic exploit, and the
most startling among many, was the single-handed massacre of a hundred
Huguenots who had taken refuge in a church near Poitiers. Antoine de
Richelieu “amused himself” by shooting down these poor defenceless
creatures in cold blood.
So much for the Cardinal’s great-uncles. His grandfather, Louis du
Plessis, Seigneur de Richelieu, the eldest of the family, died a
young man, but not before he had helped on its fortunes by a marriage
profitable in dignity, if not in coin. The heir of Richelieu was
of a quieter spirit than his brothers. He entered the household of
a fine old noble--Antoine de Rochechouart, seneschal of Toulouse,
distinguished for valour in the reigns of Louis XII and François I--as
lieutenant of his bodyguard; and very shortly married his master’s
daughter, thus distantly connecting his famous grandson with one of
the noblest old ducal families in France, from which sprang Madame de
Montespan and her brilliant brothers and sisters, the Duc de Vivonne,
Madame de Thianges, and the learned Abbess of Fontevrault. His
Rochechouart grandmother was the one precious link between Cardinal de
Richelieu and the higher nobility.
M. de Rochechouart was poor, probably extravagant, and his daughter
Françoise, whom tradition makes neither young, pretty, nor amiable,
seems to have lived in a sort of dependence on the great Dame Anne
de Polignac, dowager of La Rochefoucauld, at Verteuil, where Charles
V was royally entertained in 1539. These circumstances may account
for the _mésalliance_ which Mademoiselle de Rochechouart certainly
made in marrying Louis du Plessis. Her interest gained him the Court
appointment of _échanson_, or chief butler, to Henry II. But he was
neither clever nor prudent, and his widow was left with five young
children, very little money, a sharp, proud temper, and a deep
discontent with her lot in life.
She settled herself at Richelieu, then only a small castle on an island
in the river Mable, in the heart of a country terribly disturbed
by civil war, and commanded, from the neighbouring hills, by the
strongholds of unfriendly neighbours. Here she brought up her children,
of whom the second son, François, was the father of Cardinal de
Richelieu.
The story goes that a tragic event made François lord of Richelieu.
There was a feud, centuries old, between the Du Plessis in their moated
castle and the family of Mausson, perched upon the hill. The quarrel
had been in abeyance during the peaceable, absentee life of Louis du
Plessis, but when his proud widow, with her haughty, passionate boys,
took up her abode at Richelieu, it broke out again furiously. Louis,
the eldest son, was just growing into manhood, an officer in the Duc de
Montpensier’s guards, when he fell out with the Sieur de Mausson over
that ancient bone of contention, a seat in church.
Both families attended the village church of Braye, on the forest slope
close by. In those days, and long afterwards, the chief gentleman in
the parish had rights over the church quite as jealously guarded as any
other of his feudal privileges. He sat with his family high up in the
choir. He ordered the hour of mass, and the curé did not venture to
begin before he arrived. The congregation followed his lead throughout.
When he was absent, his servants sat in his place and insolently
demanded the honours due to him. His coat of arms was hung up for all
to see. If he died, the bells chimed unceasingly for forty days, and
the church was hung with black velvet for a year and a day.
It appears that the Sieur de Mausson and the young Seigneur de
Richelieu both demanded honours which could not be paid to both. The
young man, pushed on by his mother, made an angry resistance to the
Mausson claims. His neighbour, by way of settling the question, lay in
wait for Louis and murdered him.
Madame de Richelieu thought of nothing but revenge. Her younger son,
François, was page to King Charles IX.: she sent for him, and he lived
at Richelieu, mother and son with one object, one intention, till the
watched-for time came. Then one day, when Mausson was fording the
river, François and his men rushed out from the shadow of the willows.
They had set a cunning trap for the enemy, a cart-wheel hidden under
water, and while his restive horse was plunging, they fell upon him and
killed him. So ended the feud between Mausson and Richelieu, still a
lingering tradition in the valley of the Mable.
There was not much justice in those days, but it appears that François
was obliged to fly the country. He wandered as far as Poland, where
Henry of Anjou was playing at being King, and shared in the adventures
of that most worthless of the Valois when he ran away with the Polish
crown jewels and travelled round by Austria and Venice to succeed
Charles IX on the throne of France.
François de Richelieu became Henry’s trusted servant. Certainly
there was nothing of the _mignon_ about him. Very tall, thin, solemn
and dismal, his looks were suitable to his dreary but necessary
office--first Provost of the King’s house, then Grand Provost of
France, charged with arresting malefactors and presiding over their
punishment. He was known at Court as “Tristan l’Hermite,” so that he
must have struck his contemporaries as resembling, not in his office
alone, the famous Provost of Louis XI.
François de Richelieu was affianced in early youth, before the Mausson
affair drove him abroad, to Suzanne de la Porte, who belonged by birth
to the higher _bourgeoisie_ of his native province. Circumstances
brought about this marriage, to which one cannot imagine that the proud
Françoise de Rochechouart gave a very willing consent.
The family of La Porte, highly respectable, and clever with all the
Poitevin shrewdness, possessed estates in Poitou and elsewhere.
François de la Porte, the Cardinal’s maternal grandfather, was a
brilliant scholar at the University of Poitiers, only second in fame to
that of Paris, and first in Europe for the study of Roman law in the
original spirit; keen, solid, logical, practical.
François de la Porte became a learned and distinguished advocate in the
law-courts of Paris, but did not lose interest in his own province and
his neighbours there. He appears to have been specially concerned with
the affairs of Louis de Richelieu, who, according to Tallemant, was not
only very poor, but “embrouilla furieusement sa maison,” and left his
family in real distress. M. de la Porte made himself very useful to
Dame Françoise de Richelieu, no doubt partly as to the management of
her more distant property, difficult enough in those desperate times,
and satisfied the vanity with which his contemporaries credit him by
marrying his daughter to her son. The exact date of the marriage does
not seem to be known.
As Grand Provost, François de Richelieu had a house in Paris, in the
Rue du Bouloy, and all probabilities point to the fact of his son
Armand having been born there. He was certainly baptized in Paris,
though not till eight months after his birth, the delay being caused
partly by his extreme delicacy, partly by the long and dangerous
journey from Poitou which had to be made by his grandmother, who was
present at the church of Saint-Eustache as one of his sponsors.
The others were two Marshals of France, Armand de Gontaut-Biron and
Jean d’Aumont; each of whom gave the child a name. Both these gallant
soldiers are celebrated by Voltaire in the _Henriade_:
“D’Aumont, qui sous cinq Rois avoit porté les armes;
Biron, dont le seul nom repandoit les alarmes....”
Both were intimate friends of the Grand Provost, and joined him later
in placing their swords at the command of Henry IV.
The name of François de Richelieu is frequently to be met with in
the documents of Henry III.’s reign. He received the highest honour
Royalty could bestow, the Order of the Holy Spirit. The King’s
personal safety depended largely on him, and allowing for the general
corruption of the time, he seems to have performed his duties, often
secret and mysterious, with honesty, loyalty, and courage. On that
wild day in 1588, when the Duc de Guise had been welcomed by Paris
with mad enthusiasm, when the streets were chained and barricaded
against the King’s troops, and Henry was escaping from his “ungrateful
city,” it was the Grand Provost who checked the pursuers at the Porte
de la Conférence. Old writers say that the gate took its name from
that circumstance, and tell how “François de Richelieu, Grand Prévôt
de France, père du Cardinal de même nom, arrêta les Parisiens qui
vouloient suivre le Roi, pour tâcher de le surprendre.”
Luckily for his own fame, this “wise officer” was not an active agent
in the murder of the Duc de Guise at Blois, a few months later. But he
was sent to the Hôtel de Ville to arrest those dignified citizens whom
the King suspected of being concerned in the Guise conspiracy. And in
the following summer he performed his last duty towards Henry III. by
arresting the miserable monk, Jacques Clément, whom the Duchesse de
Montpensier, sister of Guise, had persuaded to earn his salvation by
murdering the King, “enemy of the Catholic religion.”
In the confusion that followed Henry’s death, the wise “Tristan” did
not trust himself to the faction of the Guises. With other Catholic
nobles, and in spite of family traditions, he turned to the one man in
whose hands he saw safety for France and himself, the Protestant Henry
of Navarre. That clever Prince received him cordially and confirmed
him in his appointments. So it came to pass that the nephew of “the
Monk” reddened his sword with Catholic blood at Arques and at Ivry, and
followed his new King, still as Grand Provost of France, to the camp
before Paris. There his career was cut short by a fever in the summer
of 1590, at the age of forty-two.
CHAPTER II
1590-1595
Friends and relations--The household at Richelieu--Country life in
Poitou.
Whether the widow of François de Richelieu was in famine-stricken
Paris during the siege--one of those afflicted ladies to whom the
good-natured and politic Henry sent provisions first, passports later,
that they might escape from the city--or whether she had already, her
husband being so strongly in opposition to the ruling powers there,
removed herself and her five children into the country it seems
impossible to know.
She was not without influential friends in Paris; the more useful,
perhaps, because they were not in the fighting line. Her father lived
in the Rue Hautefeuille, near the Church of St. André-des-Arcs, in
the heart of the Latin quarter; the old turrets of his house still
remain. He was divided from the Rue du Bouloy, on the north side of the
river beyond the Louvre, by two bridges, the Island, and a labyrinth
of dirty, narrow, dangerous streets. There may well have been a gulf
fixed, during those horrible months of the siege, between the old
advocate and his daughter.
But Amador de la Porte, his younger son, and Denys Bouthillier, his
head clerk and future successor, were not likely to let Suzanne and
her children suffer any unnecessary privation. Both were strong and
brilliant men, worthy members of that _bourgeoisie_ which was the pride
and life of Paris. Amador, some years younger than his sister, was
apparently too restless to settle down in his father’s profession. But
François de la Porte had been very useful, as advocate, to the Order of
Malta. They rewarded him by receiving Amador as a Knight of the Order,
without a too close inquiry into his proofs of nobility. His foot once
on the ladder, Amador rose to be Commander, then Grand Prior of France,
and by his nephew’s favour held several important governments.
These two men, Amador de la Porte and Denys Bouthillier, were constant
friends and guardians of the Richelieu children. Bouthillier and his
sons were devoted to the Cardinal throughout his career, to their
very great advantage. Claude, the eldest, made an enormous fortune as
_surintendant des finances_ under Louis XIII., and his son Léon, Comte
de Chavigny, was a minister under both Richelieu and Mazarin. Sébastien
and Victor rose high in the Church. Denys became private secretary to
Queen Marie de Médicis, and was created Baron de Rancé; he was the
father of Armand Jean de Rancé, the famous Abbot of La Trappe.
Through the Cardinal’s other La Porte uncle, of whom, personally, not
much is known, the old advocate’s family stepped up into something like
equality with the highest in the kingdom. His son, Charles, a bold,
eccentric creature, attached himself from the first to the fortunes of
his cousin, Armand de Richelieu, and by this means became a Marshal
of France and Duc de la Meilleraye. He was one of the Cardinal’s most
trusted aides-de-camp, and later on, a conspicuous figure in Paris
during the troubles of the Fronde.
In the autumn of 1590, if not sooner, a family of women and children
was established at the Château de Richelieu. There were Dame Françoise
de Rochechouart, widow of the Seigneur Louis, and her daughter, also a
widow, Françoise du Plessis, Madame de Marconnay. There were Suzanne de
la Porte, widow of the Grand Provost, and her five children; Françoise,
a girl of twelve--who married first the Seigneur de Beauvau, secondly,
René de Vignerot, Seigneur du Pont-de-Courlay, and was the mother of
the Cardinal’s favourite niece, Madame de Combalet, afterwards created
Duchesse d’Aiguillon; Henry, a well-known courtier of Louis XIII.’s
young days; Alphonse, at this time intended for the Bishopric of Luçon;
Armand Jean, the political genius, now a delicate, feverish atom of
five years old; Nicole, who married the Marquis de Maillé-Brézé, and
whose daughter, Claire Clémence, became the wife of the great Condé.
The head of this household, according to immemorial French custom,
was the grandmother, Françoise de Rochechouart. Her rule, no doubt,
was severe, and there are evidences that her daughter-in-law, a woman
of gentler type, suffered under it. The hard old aristocrat who had
condescended in her marriage with Louis du Plessis was scornful of the
_bourgeoise_ mother of her grandchildren. She was soured too by the
losses and troubles of her life. Probably Suzanne brought from Paris
the habits of a civilisation that did not suit that rough old home,
that “ancient house of stone, roofed with slates,” strongly fortified
with walls and moats as useful now as in the time of the English wars,
when they were new. In 1590, the civil wars were by no means at an end.
The province, devastated for years by Catholics and Huguenots flying
at each other’s throats, now suffered equally in the struggle between
Henry IV. and the League. Poitiers took the latter side, and for
three years, from 1591 to 1594, the King’s army besieged it in vain.
All the neighbouring country, including the valley of the Mable, was
ruined and unsafe. A band of ruffian soldiers sacked the small town of
Faye-la-Vineuse, on the hills overlooking Richelieu. No wonder if the
gentle Suzanne, “loyal lady” and tender mother, was kept sleepless by
burning horizons as often as by her little Armand, shivering with fever
in the unwholesome mists of that river valley.
Her anxieties indeed were many; for though Dame Françoise might be
mistress of the house, all the business connected with her children
and her inheritance devolved on her. And the Richelieu affairs were in
an embarrassed state. The Grand Provost had left heavy debts behind
him. There was the management of various small estates and châteaux
in Poitou, which by some means or other had become possessions of
the family: one of these was Mausson, name of ill-omen, which had
been taken in exchange for an estate in Picardy, part of the dowry of
Suzanne de la Porte.
She was an excellent woman of business, with hereditary instincts of
law and order. All her tact and capacity, directed by strong affection,
were devoted to the interests of her children. The words she wrote to
Armand, years later, when he was Bishop of Luçon, seem to have been the
key-note of her life:
“L’inquiétude que j’ai me tue et je vois bien que je n’aurai jamais de
joie que lorsque, vous sachant tous heureux, je serai en paradis.”
With such a mother, and with an indulgent aunt in Madame de
Marconnay--in spite of a fierce grandmother, barred gates and alarms
of war--the children’s life at Richelieu need not have been unhappy.
Indeed it was not so, if one may judge by the Cardinal’s recollections
of it, and his constant devotion to the old place where most of his
childhood was spent. After all, the family was on the winning side.
France was growing tired of the League, attracted by the sunny,
accommodating patriotism of Henry IV. If the harvests of Poitou were
destroyed, woods cut down, villages burnt and pillaged, it was often,
odd as this may sound, the work of friends, and in the intervals of
these stormy visits of robber bands, country life went on cheerfully.
The strong old manor nestled snugly on the islet in the river-bed,
something after the fashion of Chenonceaux in Touraine or Bazouges
in Anjou. On the border of these two provinces and of Poitou, the
country round Richelieu had something of the character of all three.
The rich fertility of Touraine, the vineyards and gardens, though not
unknown here, soon gave way to the forests and marshes of the wilder
provinces. But Richelieu had its park and its avenues, leading from
the high road which ran south from Chinon and Champigny into Poitou.
By this road came all the travellers, all the visitors: Amador de la
Porte, the beloved uncle, with news from Paris; Jacques du Plessis,
the great-uncle, the non-resident Bishop of Luçon, with his eye on a
young successor; or, less welcome to the heads of the family, the Duc
de Montpensier, the feudal neighbour, with his pack of wolf-hounds and
swaggering troop of guards and followers. One may fancy, even then,
that the dark eyes of Armand watched the owner of Champigny, scarred
from the wars, without much friendliness.
There are signs that the family at Richelieu was on kindly terms with
its neighbours of lower estate. The curé of Braye, M. Yver, who said
mass often in the chapel of the château, was an intimate friend. There
was no oppression of the peasants, who lived round about in their low,
mud-floored, one-roomed cottages, and eked out their poor harvest by
catching game in the forest or fishing in the river. All through the
western provinces, indeed, then and for long afterwards, seigneur and
peasant lived well together; the contrary was the exception. And the
contrary came to pass, in great measure, through the action of the
founder of absolute monarchy, the boy who ran about hand in hand with
his mother at Richelieu.
In the meanwhile, Dame Suzanne befriended and doctored the people,
knew them all by name, visited them, gossiped with them. She and her
children witnessed their marriages, were sponsors at the baptism of
their babes; a few years later, in 1618, the old registers of Braye
bear witness that the infant son of young Henry du Plessis was named at
the font, in the chapel at Richelieu, by two “poor orphans,” assisted
by “ten other poor persons.” The gates of the château were open to any
humble neighbours who suffered in the wars; the kitchen supplied them
with food, sometimes not too plentiful even there; and holy-days found
the courtyard full of peasants playing their bagpipes, dancing their
quaint provincial dances, singing the songs of Poitou. Thus masters and
servants alike managed to forget the hardships and terrors of the time.
Among scenes like these the Cardinal’s early childhood was spent, and
to his dying day, with all France at his feet, he loved that corner
of Poitou. It must be added that the traditions of Richelieu itself,
supported by many writers of the seventeenth century, declare that he
was born there. When Mademoiselle de Montpensier, in 1637, paid her
visit to Madame d’Aiguillon at the magnificent palace into which the
Cardinal had transformed the little stronghold of his fathers, and
found some of the rooms inconceivably small and mean, compared with
the stately exterior, it was explained to her that the Cardinal had
ordered Le Mercier, his architect, to preserve unaltered that part of
the old building where his parents had lived and where he was born.
The witnesses on the same side are too many to quote. On the other
hand, Richelieu himself declared on more than one occasion that he was
born in Paris, a Parisian, a native of the city which always had his
heart; and his enemies dwelt strongly on the same fact, treating the
Poitevin theory as an outcome of that immense pride and vanity which
encouraged the Cardinal’s worshippers to represent his family and their
possessions as older and greater than they really were; feudal magnates
of centuries, instead of country gentlemen with their fortune to seek.
CHAPTER III
1595-1607
The University of Paris--The College of Navarre--The Marquis du
Chillou--A change of prospect--A student of theology--The Abbé de
Richelieu at Rome--His consecration
Before Armand de Richelieu was eleven years old, his uncle Amador, who
was among the first to recognize the boy’s brilliant gifts, carried
him off to Paris and placed him at the University. It was the family
intention that Armand should carve out his living in a career of arms.
The eldest brother, Henry, the seigneur of Richelieu, was to marry,
and to cut a figure at Court. Being a charming and agreeable young
fellow, he was likely to succeed in this line. Alphonse was a saint,
and a born ecclesiastic; his future needed no arrangement; the see of
Luçon was waiting for him. After the death of the great-uncle, Jacques
du Plessis, in 1592, the revenues of the diocese were taken over by a
titular bishop--no other than M. Yver, curé of Braye and chaplain at
Richelieu--a worthy warming-pan who paid the largest portion to Madame
de Richelieu, and wasted as little as possible on the cathedral and the
diocese. The canons rebelled and complained most unreasonably, we are
told; but Henry IV. had confirmed Henry III.’s grant of the bishopric
to the Richelieu family, and the Chapter could obtain no redress. They
had to wait till Alphonse was of age to be consecrated.
It was the right thing for every young Frenchman, of every rank,
whatever his future walk in life might be, to go through his course
at one of the universities. A king’s son might be found on the Paris
benches, listening to the same lecture with the clever son of a
tradesman or even a peasant from a remote province. The poor students
were quite as numerous as the rich; they filled the high houses and
crowded the narrow streets of the famous Pays Latin; they “lived as
they could,” and their character as a community did not alter much in
the course of centuries.
When Armand de Richelieu was first entered at the College of Navarre,
where “the great Henry” had studied before him, the University was at
a low ebb, both as to professors and students. The wars of the League,
the fighting in the streets, the horrors of the siege, had driven most
decent people away from Paris, while armies of vagabonds and fugitives
took possession of the city, even of that “city within a city,” which
the University had been ever since the time when Philippe Auguste built
its enclosing wall.
That wall still existed long after the young days of Richelieu. Its
broad ditches, its battlements and frequent towers, its seven or eight
formidable gateways, two of which defended a bridge and a ferry over
the Seine, while the Tour de Nesle, at the western corner, frowned
across at the Louvre--all enclosed with mediæval strength that Latin
quarter, a half-moon in shape, which sloped up, a mass of lanes,
colleges, convents, churches, to the old royal abbey and Church of Ste.
Geneviève, where her shrine, the chief religious treasure of Paris, was
kept; destroyed in the eighteenth century and replaced by the Pantheon
with Voltaire’s bones and Soufflot’s ugly dome.
The University existed before the colleges. They were founded, one by
one, by charitable men and women, mostly for the benefit of the poor
scholars of different special towns or countries. Often their names
told their story; but sometimes they were called by the name of the
founder, such as the “Collège du Cardinal Lemoine.”
The College of Navarre was one of the best known and highest in
reputation. It was founded in 1304 by Jeanne, wife of Philippe le Bel
and Queen of Navarre in her own right, in memory of the victory of
Mons-en-Puelle in Flanders. It was thus nearly three hundred years old
when Armand de Richelieu entered it, and had already that royal and
military reputation which lasted through three or four centuries more.
An old writer on Paris says that the sons of the greatest nobles in
the kingdom boarded in this college, and in order that they might not
be distracted by intercourse with outside students--a real danger, one
would think, and of worse things than distraction--no other scholars
were received. “Navarre” did not always remain so exclusive. But this
was probably its character in Richelieu’s time, though we do not
positively know whether the young gentleman, with his private tutor and
his footmen--all of whom remained many years in his service--lodged in
the college or at his grandfather’s house in the Rue Hautefeuille.
The College of Navarre had had famous men among its tutors and
professors. Nicolas Oresme, one of its early head masters, was tutor
to King Charles V., who owed to him his surname of “The Wise.” He was
a translator of Aristotle, and is supposed to have made the first
French version of the Bible. Somewhat later, the celebrated mystic,
Jean Gerson, believed by many to be the real author of the _Imitatio
Christi_, was a teacher in the college and became Chancellor of the
University. A famous Principal, also Chancellor, was Cardinal d’Ailly,
Archbishop of Cambray, a theologian of tremendous strength, known at
the Council of Constance as the “Eagle of France,” and “the Hammer of
the Heretics.”
The traditions of “Navarre” were inspiring and severe. At the end of
the sixteenth century, when young Richelieu was going through its
courses of “grammar” and “philosophy,” the college was ruled by Jean
Yon, a lover of Cicero, of discipline, and of Church ceremonies.
Long after the days of dry study and compulsory Latin were over, the
Cardinal kept a friendly recollection of his old master, and declared
that he could never see him without “a feeling of respect and fear.”
Probably, therefore, Jean Yon was wisely careful to hide his admiration
of the boy, who, according to one of his biographers, “avala comme
d’un trait toute la grammaire,” knew by instinct how to baffle his
examiners by puzzling counter-questions, and dazzled both teachers and
comrades by the bold and sparkling flashes of his genius.
But Master Yon was not always the stern pedagogue. The Cardinal ever
remembered with peculiar pleasure taking part, as a singing boy, in the
great procession which marched from Ste. Geneviève on her hill, right
across Paris, to visit the tomb of St. Denis. The whole University
joined in the procession, and on this occasion it was led by Jean Yon
and a chanting choir from the College of Navarre.
Once upon a time, they say, that procession was so long that when the
head was entering the Church of St. Denis, far away in the northern
outskirts of the city, the tail, of great dignity, had not yet come
forth from the Church of the Mathurins, where the general rendezvous
had been fixed. This was in the time of Charles VI., when all Paris was
praying and making processions that his lost senses might be restored
to him. In those days, we are told, the University of Paris was the
centre of learning for all the nations of Europe and the mother of all
their universities, including “Oxfort en Angleterre.” Her European fame
and the number of her students had dwindled a good deal before the day
when Armand de Richelieu, the slim, keen, black-haired boy of twelve,
marched in her procession as an _enfant de chœur_.
Down the hill they wound, threading the dark labyrinth of high college
walls, then perhaps following the Rue St. Jacques, the old Roman
road, down to the Petit Châtelet, guarding with its tunnelled gateway
the entrance to the Petit Pont; or, more likely, keeping to their
own Latin-speaking quarter as far west as the Pont St. Michel--the
Pont Neuf was not yet finished--and there crossing to the Island and
passing in front of the Palais de Justice, through crowds of men of
law, red-robed councillors, officials and hangers-on of the Parliament,
quite as busy and as noisy as the ecclesiastical throng they had
left behind them. The Pont-au-Change, haunt of money-changers and
bird-catchers, carried them on to the farther shore; one of those steep
and ancient bridges, chiefly built of wood and blocked with houses,
shops and stalls, which were difficult to cross at all times and were
constantly in danger from flood or fire. Then the procession’s way was
almost blocked by the great round towers and frowning prison walls
of the Grand Châtelet. Then through dark and narrow ways it passed
out into the wider spaces, the gayer air, of the Paris of the north
bank, of kings and their palaces, and leaving the Louvre to the left,
the Hôtel de Ville, Bastille, and Temple far to the right, went on by
the Rue St. Denis towards the gate of that name, and so out into the
frequented road leading to the old towers that sheltered the shrine of
the Saint.
All the way there was a constant carillon of bells from a hundred
steeples; the red and gold of vestments and banners glowed in the
sunshine; trumpets brayed; and with loud chanting the procession paced
along. To a boy fresh from his lessons, who was to live on into more
colourless times, such a holiday glimpse of the Middle Ages may very
well have been a pleasant recollection.
At this time young Richelieu was looking forward to nothing but the
life of a soldier, and of course a mercenary one, for his family was
likely to endow him with little means of living. The world was his
oyster, which he with sword must open. It was nothing new: he would
walk in the footsteps of his father and his great-uncles, with the
advantage of serving a King whom he heartily admired; of this his
Memoirs give proof enough.
When the usual University course was over, M. de la Porte proceeded to
make a man and a soldier of his nephew. He placed him at the famous
Academy of M. de Pluvinel, a former companion-in-arms of the Grand
Provost, who had made a career for himself as a trainer of young
gentlemen. He taught them fencing, riding, dancing, music, mathematics,
various manly games. He was an authority on fashion and style, wit and
manners, the ways of foreign nations; in short, he turned boys fresh
from college into men of the world, courtiers, soldiers, diplomatists.
There was scarcely a leading man in France in the early seventeenth
century who had not passed through the “manège royal” of M. de Pluvinel.
A title was necessary, in order to swagger successfully among the gay
_cadets_ of the Academy. Armand became Marquis du Chillou, taking the
name from a small estate in Poitou brought into the family by his
great-grandmother.
His years of study at the Academy seem to have been among the happiest
of his life. Made mentally of steel and flame as he was, ancestral
hardness and strength of will joined with a passionate ambition all his
own, the fighting career of a successful soldier was likely to attract
him irresistibly. When he was young, it seemed indeed the one chance
of shining in the world, of commanding men. And he never lost his love
for the profession he had to renounce, though it became clear that for
a daring spirit such as his, the red robe was as practical a garment as
the buff coat. “Sous le prêtre, on retrouve toujours en lui le soldat,”
says M. Hanotaux.
There was one drawback to the military prospects of Armand de
Richelieu. The delicate, aguish boy had not grown into a strong youth.
His keen spirit was now, as ever, a sword too sharp for its frail
sheath. Hard study and lack of fresh air during his college days had
had their likely effect on his weak constitution and slight frame. For
his sake, his mother did not mourn over the family circumstances that
forbade him, after all, to be a soldier. “Mon malade,” as she called
him, was not of those who could sleep on open field or fell, in mud or
mire, as soundly as within stone walls with curtains round his bed.
For the family, it was a question of losing the revenues of the see
of Luçon. Alphonse de Richelieu, its intended Bishop, at the age of
nineteen or twenty, turned away in disgust from the worldly-wise
arrangement, and decided to become a Carthusian monk. It may not be
unfair to describe him as “dévot et bizarre”; but one seems to see in
this singular resolution an outcome of the reaction against the dead
and conscienceless state into which the sixteenth century had brought
the French Church; the reaction which was already living and moving
in such men as François de Sales, Vincent de Paul, Pierre de Bérulle,
though leading them, as to their religious life, into reforming action
rather than lonely contemplation.
Armand’s choice was soon made. No doubt the change was to him
inevitable. There could not be two young men more different than
himself and Alphonse; yet he too had a conscience of his own, of the
truly Latin kind which demands any and every sacrifice for the sake
of the family. He is said to have written to his uncle, who, one may
well believe, was sincerely sorry for him: “The will of God be done: I
accept all, for the good of the Church and the glory of our name.” The
latter aspiration, at least, was fulfilled.
At seventeen, in the year 1602, the Marquis du Chillou laid down his
sword and his title, left M. de Pluvinel’s Academy and returned to the
University. A year or two later, there was no more eager student of
philosophy and theology than the Abbé de Richelieu. There are merry
stories of the time which suggest that he and his private tutor M.
Mulot, afterwards his chaplain, were concerned in wild pranks, such as
robbing gardens and orchards, which would have been impossible under
the strict discipline of old Master Yon. There is a pretty legend
which tells that the Cardinal, in his last days, sent for an old
college gardener whose peaches he had stolen--the good man’s name was
Rabelais, and he came from Chinon--and paid him a large sum of money
as compensation for being both robbed and frightened: at that time, an
unlucky wretch who was summoned before the Eminentissime went in very
reasonable fear of his life.
The sober University, in its clock-work course, hardly knew what to
make of Armand de Richelieu. He swallowed theology as he had swallowed
grammar, and the ordinary progress of learning was far too slow for
him. After studying independently with several learned masters,
especially with Richard Smith, an Englishman, of the University of
Louvain, afterwards Vicar Apostolic in England, he was ambitious to
hold a public disputation at the Sorbonne.
The doctors of that reverend foundation refused the unusual request;
but Richelieu, who ardently desired to become an adept in controversy,
persuaded his old College of Navarre to be less timidly narrow and
conservative. Here the lad of nineteen, worn to a shadow by studying
hard eight hours a day, set forth his thesis and defended it against
all comers. The listeners were slightly uneasy, for his argument was
based rather on philosophy than on strictly theological grounds,
and was indeed flavoured by the influence of Jansenius, who came
to Paris about this time. But the long struggle between Gallicans
and Ultramontanes, Bishops and Jesuits, was only at its beginning,
and Jansenism proper was not born; the sixteenth century had known
little more than the fiercer, simpler quarrel between Catholics and
Protestants, the heretic and the faithful. As a fact, in his own
original way, Richelieu held all the doctrines approved and taught by
the Sorbonne.
There was every reason why the future Bishop should hurry on his
theological studies. The Chapter of Luçon had completely lost its
patience; and this is not surprising, for both the cathedral and
the episcopal palace were falling into ruins, while no money could
be extracted from M. Yver and Madame de Richelieu, until, at last,
a decree of the Parliament forced them to provide for the necessary
repairs. If the bishopric was to remain in the Richelieu family, Armand
must be consecrated with as little delay as possible.
He was not yet near the canonical age of a bishop. He had, however,
been ordained deacon in 1606, and early in that year, while he was
still hurrying through his last examinations, King Henry wrote to his
Ambassador at Rome, recommending the Abbé Armand Jean du Plessis,
royally nominated to the bishopric of Luçon, to the favour of His
Holiness Paul V., and praying for an early consecration on the ground
of the young man’s “mérite et suffisance,” which were such as to make
the legal delays morally quite unnecessary.
Such dispensations were common enough, but this one was slow in coming.
Paul V., the Borghese Pope, had not long been elected, but was already
known for his determined will and strong sense of duty. He was not a
man who would lightly break through any laws or customs of the Church,
and certainly not to please King Henry IV., whose conversion he
distrusted and whose way of life he condemned. The Abbé de Richelieu,
hearing nothing from Rome, resolved to wait no longer. In the autumn
of 1606 he left Paris and travelled hard to Rome, very impatient, and
quite sure that if he could once gain the Pope’s ear and plead his own
cause, it would speedily be won.
He was not mistaken, though Paul V. received him coldly on his first
introduction by the Ambassador: a self-confident, presumptuous
boy who expected to be ordained priest and consecrated bishop at
twenty-one, was not likely to meet with instant favour from an elderly,
legal-minded martinet. Various tales are told, by friends and enemies,
as to the means by which Richelieu quickly gained his ends at the Papal
Court. Some say that he added a year to his age, or falsified the date
of his baptism, and that the Pope, hearing too late of the trick,
observed, “This young man will be a great knave.” On the other hand, it
is said that, struck with admiration of Richelieu’s genius, the Pope
made no difficulty, saying, “It is just that one whose wisdom is above
his age should be ordained under age.” On the whole, the latter story
seems the more probable; but neither has any real foundation.
It is certain, at any rate, that the Abbé de Richelieu made the best
use of the months he spent at Rome, and convinced Paul V., himself a
clever man, that King Henry’s praise was not undeserved. He preached
before the Pope, and his ready learning and splendour of diction were
considered miraculous. He carried on arguments with His Holiness on
the morals of Henry and other subjects, so firmly yet so respectfully
that Paul was altogether charmed. He studied the spirit of Rome, that
mysterious city which was at once “the capital of the Catholic world
and the centre of the civilized, world.” As the centre of an older
world still, of ancient history and pagan art, Rome had not the same
attraction for him. All that was to come later, when the Cardinal
attempted, without great success, to pose as one of the chief art
patrons in Europe.
At this time, his whole mind was given to present advancement, and his
intuition as to his own interest was faultless. He learned Italian and
Spanish, he courted the Cardinals and other dignitaries, and while
dazzling his company with all the light French brilliancy of his young
wit, he pleased them by the gentleness and modesty he knew well how to
assume. Thus he saved himself from much envy and jealousy which might
have nipped his career at the outset.
On April 17, 1607, Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, aged twenty-two
years and seven months, was ordained priest and consecrated bishop by
the Cardinal de Givry, who had always been his friend. The suffering
diocese of Luçon was no longer without a head, and the Roman Easter
bells rang in one of the greatest figures in French history.
PART II
THE BISHOP OF LUÇON
1607-1622
CHAPTER I
1607-1608
A Bishop at the Sorbonne--State of France under Henry IV.--Henry IV.,
his Queen and his Court--The Nobles and Princes--The unhealthiness of
Paris--The Bishop’s departure.
The diocese of Luçon--in itself one of the least desirable in
France--had to endure some months more of neglect before its new Bishop
came into residence.
Richelieu’s return to France, in the early summer of 1607, was a return
to Paris and the University, which now saw the unusual sight of a
bishop among its students. There were still examinations to pass and
distinctions to gain: the theological honours of the Sorbonne were not
lightly bestowed, even on a dignitary of the Church. But Richelieu,
once more, triumphantly satisfied his examiners, and in the autumn of
1607 he was admitted to the degree of Doctor of the Sorbonne. One may
say that the old institution was his mother and his child. She trained
the brain that transformed France and directed Europe; she was made
illustrious by his munificent care, and his feverish life at last found
rest in the shadow of her walls.
[Illustration: FROM AN ENGRAVING AFTER THE PICTURE BY FRANÇOIS PORBUS]
In the winter of 1607-8, Henry IV. was at the height of his power and
popularity, although certain dreamers, prophets of evil, necromancers,
and such-like creatures of the darkness, suggested that his useful
reign was near its end. For whatever the immoralities of his life
may have been--and they had a fatal influence on society--his political
ends and means were excellent. His favourite dream was of a general
European peace with religious toleration: and one need only realize the
state of France a hundred years later--populations crushed by cruel
taxation and dying of famine by thousands--to see what the difference
might have been if Henry and Sully could have worked their will for
twenty years more, keeping the nobles in check, insisting on justice,
studying and carrying into practical effect the means of making the
country prosperous by useful public works, by careful training in
agriculture and other industries. Under Henry and his minister--who did
not, however, share his master’s popularity--farming was encouraged,
rivers were made navigable, bridges were built, waste lands were
reclaimed, new roads were made, new crops, such as potato and
beet-root, were introduced, a labourer’s tools were safe from seizure
for debt. France was beginning to breathe after long horrors of civil
war: feudal oppression was passing away, and the country generally was
on the eve of better things, under the eye of a King who, absolute as
he certainly meant to be, loved his people and wished them well. All
was doomed to fall to pieces with the death of Henry, followed by the
regency of a stupid woman and the new policy of Richelieu.
Henry was himself the centre point of Paris, the beloved city, which
he made his home, only leaving the Louvre for visits to Saint-Germain
and Fontainebleau, or for hunting excursions in the country. Small,
active, carelessly dressed, ever on the move, the Parisians saw their
King among them at all seasons, all hours, riding or driving in the
streets, equally eager after business and amusement; gambling at the
famous Fair of Saint-Germain--held during the early months of the year
on the left bank of the Seine--or planning with Sully, within the
walls of the Arsenal, those economies and financial rearrangements
which gained him the reputation of being a miser. Henry was a curious
character, half a hero, made of gold and of clay; but his Parisians,
as a rule, saw little but the gold. He was a familiar sight among them,
the frank, good-natured man, with his rosy cheeks, long nose, and
whitening beard and hair. They loved him because he was affable, kind,
easy-going, polite, and yet could be stern and royal enough when any
one displeased him. They loved his keen interest in the city, shown by
plans for rebuilding and improving, some of which were already carried
out when he died, while some lingered on into the days of Richelieu.
His favourite works were the Grande Galerie of the Louvre, the Pont
Neuf, the Hôtel de Ville, burnt by the Commune, and the Place Royale,
now known as Place des Vosges.
The Court at the Louvre, under a King impatient of etiquette--except
when Parliament or Protestants had to be awed, or foreign ambassadors
received--seems to have been lacking in dignity. It had not the
splendour, the mystery, the romance and cultivation, however evil, of
the Valois; nor had it the stiff magnificence of an absolute Louis XIV.
The tone of the Court, in fact, was _bourgeois_; and it is curious
enough that the early seventeenth century in England, as well as in
France, had this intimate flavour of something like vulgarity. James I.
cracked coarse jokes with his courtiers and slapped them on the back.
Henry IV., though a far more intelligent man, encouraged the same kind
of manners among his jovial companions at the Louvre.
The King and Queen quarrelled perpetually, and in public. The young
Bishop of Luçon, admitted at Court not only by the means of his
elder brother, a popular courtier, but through the King’s personal
liking for him, saw with his own eyes scenes to which the Cardinal
de Richelieu alluded in his Memoirs, dictated many years later. With
all his enmity towards Marie de Médicis, he had to acknowledge that
the King’s love-affairs, result of the besetting weakness of a great
prince, might justly have irritated a woman less naturally jealous,
proud and unforgiving. As one intrigue succeeded another during the
whole of Henry’s later life, and as the Queen could never be brought to
take these things meekly, it follows that peace seldom reigned at the
Louvre. Henry, on his side, turned the tables on his wife by injurious
suspicions almost certainly without foundation, and the Duc de Sully
himself told Richelieu that he had never known a week pass without a
quarrel. On one occasion, in passionate anger, Marie raised her hand
to box Henry’s ears! “M. de Sully stopped her so roughly that her arm
was bruised, crying out with an oath: ‘Are you mad, Madame? He could
have your head off in half an hour. Have you lost your senses, not
to remember what the King can do?’ The King went out; and after much
coming and going he (Sully) appeased them both. Afterwards, the Queen
complained that the Duc de Sully had struck her.”
Sometimes these quarrels had a comic side. The Queen would refuse
to dine as usual with the King, and would order a small table to be
brought into her cabinet. On these occasions the good-tempered Henry,
who never could be angry long, and who preferred living at peace with a
wife he did not really dislike, would send her choice morsels from his
table, even from his plate. If Marie’s temper had not reached the level
of accepting a peace-offering, she would coldly return the dainties.
Court gossip declared that she was afraid of poison.
In his book on Marie de Médicis, M. Batiffol gives a curious
description, drawn from old records, of the royal dinner at the Louvre
when the King and Queen dined together.
No one sat at the table with them, but a privileged public, including
the whole Court, crowded the room. The Swiss guards stood round the
table, bearded, fierce, German-speaking warriors, “old servants of the
Crown,” leaning on their halberds, dressed in velvet, white, blue, and
red. Six gentlemen served their Majesties, taking the dishes from the
“officers of the kitchen,” who brought them into the room. The _menu_,
a very considerable one, was drawn up by the Queen’s _maître d’hôtel_
and counter-signed by herself. Sometimes, generally on Sundays only,
the King’s musicians gave a concert during dinner. As a rule, there was
a good deal of conversation. The King and Queen talked to the courtiers
who stood in ranks behind the Swiss Guard; not of “affairs,” but of
any light and interesting subject that might occur.
On such an occasion the King may well have shown special favour to a
young man in episcopal purple, of middle height, very thin, with black
hair, a delicate, pointed face, keen dark eyes, under a broad brow full
of intelligence, quick to catch and respond to every slightest glance
from Royalty. Young Richelieu--“My Bishop,” Henry called him--may have
had stories to tell of his Roman experiences, stories pleasing to the
King, who had taken the trouble to push his fortunes; and the wit, the
memory, the reasoning power, which amazed the Sorbonne, may also have
been noticeable at the Louvre.
Sometimes the talk led on to thin ice, and Richelieu knew it: for
instance, when the King reminded him of certain things he had written
about the Maréchal de Biron, his godfather’s son, beheaded for
conspiracy in 1602. It was a lesson as to giving a handle to jealous
enemies, which Richelieu did not soon forget.
Dinner over, the Queen returned to her dogs and monkeys and parrots,
her gaming, card-tricks and music, or walked in the garden, or drove in
the city, perhaps visiting her divorced predecessor, Queen Marguerite
de Valois--large, self-indulgent, with a flaxen wig--who led an
extravagantly immoral but literary and charitable life in Paris, the
adopted sister and aunt of the Royal family; perhaps driving out to
Saint-Germain to see the children, who lived there, a large household,
legitimate and otherwise, under the care of the Baronne--afterwards
Marquise--de Montglat.
The King too, though never forgetful of public business, had his
amusements of many kinds--gambling, hunting, building, making love.
Sometimes he and the Queen dined out together in Paris, frequently
with M. Zamet, banker and money-lender and Henry’s very faithful
servant, at his palatial hôtel in the Marais. Sometimes they delighted
the Parisians by sharing their amusements in the streets and on the
bridges--jousts, sham fights in masquerade, running at the ring. Then
were to be seen the young nobles of France, infected with Henry’s own
dash and daring recklessness, flinging themselves so desperately into
these mock battles that real wounds were given and lives were lost.
The famous Baron de Bassompierre, chief of the “dix-sept seigneurs,”
leaders of fashion, to whose exclusive ranks Henry de Richelieu also
belonged, was nearly killed in one of these encounters in the paved
court of the Louvre.
Hardouin de Péréfixe, tutor to Louis XIV. and afterwards Archbishop
of Paris, wrote for his pupil’s instruction a history of his royal
grandfather, Henry the Great. Drawing on his own memory, or something
very near it, he sketched the state of society at the beginning of the
century. While the King and his ministers were working hard in lifting
their country out of the slough of war and abject misery, most of the
nobles were finding mischief for their idle hands to do. The Memoirs of
Bassompierre and others prove that Péréfixe told less than the truth:
he was too courtier-like, too careful of offending young royal ears, to
give much idea of the brutality of manners which existed in the society
of Henry IV. and Marie de Médicis; but he describes vividly the temper
of the men among whom Armand de Richelieu, clever, poor, observant,
shielded by his elder brother’s popularity, was growing into manhood.
“The French noblesse,” says Péréfixe, “being at peace, could not be
doing nothing; some spent their time in hunting; some in the company
of ladies; some studied _belles lettres_ and mathematics; others
travelled in foreign lands; others kept up the exercise of war under
Prince Maurice in Holland. But many, with itching hands, eager to show
off their courage without leaving home, became punctilious, and at the
least word, or at crossing glances, had their swords in their hands.
Thus a mania for duels seized on the minds of gentlemen. And these
encounters were so frequent that the nobles shed nearly as much blood
between themselves as their enemies had made them lose in battle.”
Royal edicts, one after another, had little effect in cooling these
hot spirits; especially as Henry usually forgave a crime which his
laws threatened with forfeiture of life and goods. In the following
reign such laws were less of a mockery, as the nobles found to their
cost. Louis XIII. was made of harder stuff; and Richelieu had learnt by
personal experience--his brother’s death in a duel with the Marquis de
Thémines--the need of a strong hand.
There was not much personal distinction, at this time, among the
grandees of France. Henry de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, nearest in blood
to the throne, was a shy, gloomy youth, mean in looks and character,
and though really clever and ambitious, eccentric to the verge of
madness. “Monsieur le Prince,” says Brunet, “père du grand Condé,
s’imaginoit être quelque fois oiseau et d’autres fois sanglier, et se
cachoit sous les lits et sous les tables comme s’il avoit été dans
les forêts.” It was not till 1609, after Richelieu had retired to his
diocese, that King Henry, for his own ends, married this young man to
the marvellously beautiful Mademoiselle de Montmorency. Then, to the
King’s rage and disgust, Condé proved that he had some individuality,
and ran away with his wife to Flanders. But for the dagger of
Ravaillac, a European war might have followed on this elopement.
François de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, the King’s first cousin,
uncle of Condé, brother of Henry’s old companion-in-arms and once
himself a fighter, was elderly, deaf, and incapable. He appeared
little at Court, but lived in Paris on the revenues of the Abbey of
Saint-Germain-des-Prés. His wife, Louise Marguerite de Lorraine, a
brilliant mischief-maker, with her mother, the lively old Duchesse de
Guise, widow of Henry le Balafré, was among the few really intimate
friends of Queen Marie de Médicis. Henry IV., who had once thought of
marrying her, ended by disliking her, resenting her influence over his
wife. But she kept her place at Court, and after the Prince de Conti’s
death she is said to have secretly married Bassompierre, first of
courtiers and her lover of many years.
Charles de Bourbon, Comte de Soissons, usually known as Monsieur le
Comte, was the Prince de Conti’s half-brother, his mother, Françoise
d’Orléans-Longueville, having been the second wife of Louis I., Prince
de Condé. Though outwardly loyal to Henry IV., he was perhaps the most
dangerous enemy the King had in his own immediate circle. Ambitious,
proud and violent, he never forgave Henry for breaking an early promise
of marrying him to his sister, Catherine of Navarre. Jealous of his
own position, he resented every mark of favour shown by the King,
especially the honours showered on the young Duc de Vendôme, Henry’s
eldest legitimised son. If a fit of the sulks had not kept Monsieur le
Comte out of Paris at the time of Henry’s death, he would have disputed
the regency with the Queen. Not being on the spot, he was neither
clever, strong, nor popular enough to disturb the appointed order of
things.
Henry de Bourbon, Duc de Montpensier--familiar to the Richelieu family
as lord of Champigny--was of no account at all, in court or camp,
during his later years. But he had been an heroic soldier. Son of
that Montpensier, the leader and patron of “the Monk” Richelieu and
his brother, who swept Poitou with fire and sword in the religious
wars, and of his furious Duchess, the soul of the League, the sister
of Henry le Balafré, who brought about the murder of Henry III., he,
with so many other Catholic princes and nobles, fought his uncles and
the League under the banner of Henry of Navarre. A terrible wound in
the face received at Dreux, where he commanded a regiment of cavalry,
brought Henry de Montpensier’s public career to an end at twenty-seven.
His life, after this, was one of more or less suffering. He fell out of
favour for some time with the King, being suspected of sympathy with
the Biron conspiracy. He married, in middle life, his cousin Henriette
Catherine de Joyeuse, another of the Queen’s intimate friends, and
they had one daughter, born in 1605, the heiress of all the immense
Montpensier possessions; by her marriage with Gaston of France the
mother of the famous Anne Marie d’Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier,
commonly known as La Grande Mademoiselle.
M. de Montpensier appears to have lived a great deal at Champigny, a
favourite among his many châteaux. Thirty years after his death, on
her way to visit the new splendours of Richelieu, his granddaughter
found that he was still beloved there, although the almighty Cardinal,
levelling his house with the ground, would gladly have destroyed his
memory.
The Duke died at his hôtel in Paris on the last day of February
1608, wasted by a long decline, and devotedly nursed to the end by
his eccentric Capuchin father-in-law, Père Ange, in the world Duc de
Joyeuse. “Bon prince,” l’Estoile says of Montpensier, “and as such
regretted and mourned by the King, the nobility and all the people.”
The usual amusements of the Carnival were stopped; even the little
Dauphin was not allowed to dance his ballet before the King. Three
weeks later a funeral service was held at Notre Dame, with an oration
by the popular preacher M. Fenouillet, Bishop of Montpellier. The
ceremony, which was simple, derived dignity from the presence of one
hundred and twenty poor men in long robes, carrying torches. Another
and grander service was held in April. Between these two occasions, the
last male descendant of Robert, son of Saint Louis, was conveyed with
an escort of three hundred horse to Champigny, and was buried in the
chapel which still exists there.
The Duc de Montpensier’s widow married Charles, Duc de Guise, who, with
his brothers, represented the princely House of Lorraine at the French
Court. By birth and position, of course, he was one of the first men
in France; personally he was of little account, and hardly a worthy
descendant of the great Dukes of the sixteenth century. He had not even
their looks, being short and snub-nosed. He was witty, agreeable and
generous, very frivolous and a great flirt. Richelieu, in the first
volume of his _Memoirs_, gives Henry IV.’s own estimate of this head
of the Guise family: “Plus de montre que d’effet”; rather brilliant
in company, and judged capable of great things by those who did not
know him; but so slothful and lazy that he cared for nothing but
pleasure, “et qu’en effet son esprit n’était pas plus grand que son
nez.”
[Illustration: CLOISTER AT CHAMPIGNY]
Among the more conspicuous nobles, the Duc de Bouillon, the malcontent
leader of the Protestants, was a constant thorn in the King’s side. The
Duc d’Épernon, an ambitious, adventurous courtier of Gascon origin, had
been a favourite of Henry III., and was not much loved by Henry IV.,
who did not trust him. His son, Bernard, married Gabrielle-Angélique
de Bourbon, the King’s daughter by the Marquise de Verneuil. This
alliance was roughly declined by the old Duc de Montmorency, Constable
of France, to whom Henry proposed it for his splendid young son,
that Henry de Montmorency, last of the direct line, whose high head
was among those to be mown down, at a future day, by the implacable
Cardinal.
Among left-hand Royalties, the oldest was Charles de Valois, Comte
d’Auvergne, afterwards Duc d’Angoulême, a man of a certain courage and
humorous charm, but foolish, dishonest, and unlucky. He was the son of
Charles IX. and Marie Touchet, who married the Comte d’Entraigues after
the King’s death, and became the mother of Henriette d’Entraigues,
Marquise de Verneuil, Henry IV.’s passion and the special abhorrence
of Marie de Médicis. In a fit of jealous fury, and in the supposed
interest of her children, Madame de Verneuil intrigued with Spain
against Henry. It was only the King’s enduring infatuation which saved
her half-brother, the Comte d’Auvergne, from losing his head. As it
was, he spent ten of his best years, from 1606 to 1616, shut up in the
Bastille.
Henry’s own son by Gabrielle d’Estrées, Duchesse de Beaufort, the
legitimised prince who was first known as César-Monsieur, then created
Duc de Vendôme, was the spoilt favourite among his children. No more
odious young fellow was to be found in France. Spiteful, of vicious
tendencies, “c’est un mauvais drôle, violent, moqueur, brutal.” There
was every probability that César, whom the King openly preferred to his
little lawful son, the future Louis XIII., would one day be the most
powerful of all the princes. Henry had already arranged a marriage for
him with a rich heiress of royal blood, Françoise de Lorraine, only
daughter of the Duc de Mercœur.
Such were the bearers of some of the grandest old names in France,
during the last years of Henry IV.’s reign. Hardly one of these men
had any influence on affairs, either of the court or the nation.
Concini and his wife, the Queen’s Italian favourites, were powerful
at the Louvre and lived splendidly, though they worked chiefly behind
the scenes as long as Henry lived. The Duc de Sully, with his royal
friend and master, governed the kingdom. His wise white beard, his
strict and careful management of the finances, demanded and obtained
respect. This clever and obstinate Huguenot was certainly the
best-feared man in France. He was also cordially hated for his grim,
uncompromising manners, his impatient scorn of all courtly weaknesses
and extravagances. But he was the one great statesman in France, beside
whom the other ministers were of no account, and he would have laughed
aloud, in the year 1608, if any one had prophesied coming disgrace
in his ears: an honourable disgrace, it is true, but never to be
retrieved; while, equally incredible, the young bishop of an obscure
diocese was to wield a power beyond his own most ambitious dreams.
Paris was an unpleasant place of abode in the winter of 1607-8, when
Armand de Richelieu was engaged in making his way at Court. According
to L’Estoile, the weather was extremely indisposed, “nebulous, damp
and unhealthy.” Great and small alike suffered from “force cathairres,
avec force petites véroles, rougeoles, et pourpre:” from which many
died, among others the Duc de Bouillon’s daughter. People died suddenly
of suffocation on the chest, the season being “tellement desreiglée”
that it rained perpetually day and night. The terrible gloom was made
responsible for horrid crimes of all sorts. The new year brought so
severe a frost that men, women, cattle and birds died of cold in the
fields about the city, or were partially frozen and maimed for life.
Evidently the Bishop of Luçon was among the sufferers from this
abnormal season. He was obliged to excuse himself, on account of
illness, from obeying the King’s command to preach before the Court at
Easter. After this disappointment, he was ill in bed for about four
months, as we know from his letters to M. d’Alincourt, son of the Duc
de Villeroy, Henry’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had actively
befriended him as ambassador in Rome. Richelieu was not ungrateful,
and there is something more than worldly politeness in these graceful,
sincere letters, written from his sick room to welcome M. and Mme.
d’Alincourt back to Paris and to lament that his “fascheuse maladie”
hinders him from hastening to kiss their hands.
In the late autumn of the same year the claims and grumblings of
Richelieu’s far-off diocese at last made themselves effectively heard.
There may have been other reasons for his rather hasty departure in
dark December days. The doctors may have advised country air as a help
towards shaking off an almost chronic state of fever. Or possibly,
after so long an absence from Court, his place in the royal favour may
have seemed less secure, and he was not rich enough to buy influential
friends. Or Henry, who liked men to do their duty, may have given a
hint too plain to be neglected.
In any case, having borrowed four horses and a coachman, the Bishop of
Luçon left Paris behind him, and started on his long unpleasant journey
to the dreary marshes of Lower Poitou.
CHAPTER II
1608-1610
Richelieu arrives at Luçon--His palace and household--His work in the
diocese--His friends and neighbours.
While his coach rumbled and jolted through miry ways towards the
south-west, Armand de Richelieu had time to consider what he had done
and hoped to do. The objects of his ambition were always the same:
political power and the command of men. His career might seem to have
met with a sharp check in these long months of illness, followed by
banishment to remote wilds, so far from the sources of light and of
favour, Paris and the King. But if he felt this, he was not the man to
be seriously disheartened.
A diocese, after all, is not a bad school for governing one’s
fellow-creatures. Some of Richelieu’s biographers think that he
deliberately took up the work of a resident bishop with the idea of
gaining experience for the larger career on which his heart was set:
some, that in his state of chronic poverty he found the provinces a
more honourable abode than the capital. In any case, he threw himself
with eager energy into work which was difficult enough; the province
of Poitou, and especially Lower Poitou, being desolated and devoured
by war and by taxes, torn to pieces by schism, unhealthy, dismal,
neglected, its old traditions, both of Church and State, fallen into
ruin and forgetfulness. And Luçon itself, with its fine old cathedral
lifted proudly and sadly above the mouldy roofs of the _bourg_,
neither town nor village, seemed to lie at the other end of the world,
near upon the sea, beyond leagues of wide wet marsh scattered with
miserable little farms and cottages and crossed by half-drained roads
and stagnant canals, the few wretched peasants shivering with fever.
The occasional visits of Jacques du Plessis de Richelieu, who had now
been dead sixteen years, were Luçon’s latest experience of episcopal
care. Certainly the diocese owed nothing to the Richelieu family,
which had swallowed its revenues and let its cathedral tumble down;
but with a touching faith in the future not unjustified, it offered a
hearty welcome to young Armand de Richelieu. He entered his territory
at Fontenay-le-Comte, a cheerful little town which prided itself, like
the rest of Poitou, on having produced many great men. The Bishop
was received here, not only by the inhabitants, but by a deputation
from the Chapter of Luçon, and they harangued each other with various
flattering remarks. But through the formalities of the time there
pierces that clear decided meaning which is never absent from any
utterance of Richelieu’s, even as a young man of three-and-twenty. His
speeches were never written for him. There were anger and injury in the
minds of the Luçon Chapter, and he knew it. “I am not happy enough,”
he said, “to have all your hearts.” But now that he and they were to
live together, things would be very different. They would learn to
know him, and to wish him well. For his part, he was ready to forget
the past, highly esteeming the law which the ancients called “amnistie
d’oubliance.” Possibly there was a wry face here and there among the
old canons at this touch of generosity, and it was not very long, in
fact, before they began to quarrel with their new Bishop; but he had
brought with him from Paris the fame of a preacher and a theologian,
and the dull little town was _en fête_ on that saint’s day in December
when Richelieu first said mass and preached in his own cathedral.
All, indeed, seemed peace and harmony. Even the Protestants, who were
rather numerous in the diocese and in all that part of France, had a
friendly word from the new Bishop on his arrival. One of the speeches
which has been preserved was addressed to the crowd in the street.
After telling them how much he valued their joyful faces and cries of
welcome, he added, “I know there are those in this company who are
divided from us as to belief; in spite of which, I hope we may be
united in affection, and I will do all that is possible to bring this
to pass.”
Here one seems to see the germ of that idea of religious toleration
which influenced Richelieu’s policy in later years. If he could
persuade the Huguenots to be “Frenchmen first and Protestants
afterwards,” he was always willing to give them liberty of worship.
If he crushed them, it was because they were a fighting faction which
endangered, in his view, the unity of France and the power of the
monarchy.
From his dilapidated palace, the heavy old buildings of which
leaned up against cathedral walls battered by wars and by weather,
Richelieu wrote in the spring of 1609 to a certain Madame de Bourges,
who lived in Paris, in the Rue des Blanc-manteaux, near the newly
fashionable Place Royale. This lady seems to have been a friend of his
mother’s family, and to have been married to one of a succession of
distinguished physicians who practised in Paris during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. She was certainly an obliging person.
Possibly her husband or son had attended the young Bishop in his four
months’ illness.
He begins his letter by thanking Madame de Bourges for a million
kindnesses, and especially for some ecclesiastical vestments she had
sent him. He found himself badly off for many necessary ornaments,
former bishops of Luçon having left little behind them. And no wonder:
they had not made it their residence for sixty years, we are told, and
fighting Huguenots had stormed and devastated the place.
“... I am now in my barony,” he writes, “beloved of everybody, so
they tell me, and I can only repeat it; but you know all beginnings
are good. I shall have no lack of occupation here, I assure you, for
everything is in such ruins that repairing will be hard work. I am
extremely ill-lodged, for I have no fire anywhere, because of the smoke
... no remedy but patience. I assure you that I have the most horrid
bishopric in France, the most muddy and the most disagreeable.... There
is no place to walk, no garden, no alley, no anything, so that I am
imprisoned in my house....”
He is immensely interested in his furniture and his household, showing
in these young days all the taste for careful detail, all the love of
magnificence and show, which was to characterise the great Minister,
the man with millions to spend where a poor little Bishop of Luçon had
only hundreds.
He tells Madame de Bourges, of whose kind and active interest he seems
very sure, that he has bought the velvet bed belonging to his aunt,
Madame de Marconnay. He has also come into possession of a stately bed
with hangings of silk and gold, which belonged to his great-uncle,
“deffunct M. de Luçon.” This style is out of fashion, apparently,
for he asks advice and help as to arranging the episcopal bed with
Bergamesque tapestry. A little later, he concludes that even a beggar
like himself must entertain his neighbours with a noble air, so that
the country may esteem him “un grand monsieur.” He will therefore be
obliged to Madame de Bourges if she will let him know the cost of two
dozen silver plates “de belle grandeur.” He hopes to get them for five
hundred crowns, but seems pretty sure that his kind friend will make up
any deficiency: “I know that for the sake of a hundred crowns you would
not let me have anything mean.”
In return for all these services the Bishop was expected to interest
himself in finding a husband for Madame de Bourges’ daughter
Magdeleine. The task was not easy: he assures his correspondent that
there is not a gentleman in the country possessing either money or
goods. “Nous sommes tous gueux en ce pays, et moi le premier,” he says
with a light-hearted air.
From the first he was very fortunate in his servants, several of whom
came to him at this time and stayed with him all his life. One of
these was his _maître d’hôtel_, a young man named La Brosse, who had
been in the service of the late Duc de Montpensier. La Brosse ordered
everything in the household, knew how the Bishop’s guests should be
entertained, and troubled him with nothing but accounts. This was well,
for the work of the diocese, once undertaken, was enough to occupy both
thought and time.
The destitution of the flock was twofold--bodily and spiritual.
Richelieu’s first care was to get his poor people relieved of some of
the heavy burden of taxes which weighed them down. Under the system
of those days, France was divided into _pays d’états_ and _pays
d’élection_. The _pays d’états_--chiefly provinces which had been
originally independent of the crown of France--were taxed by their
own representative Estates, sitting at the principal town. The _pays
d’élection_ were assessed by crown officials, who farmed out the taxes
to local companies; and among the provinces thus farmed was that of
Poitou.
The system meant local greed, dishonesty and oppression; the small
townspeople of such a place as Luçon and the country-folk of its
poverty-stricken neighbourhood had no redress from the tax-gatherers
of Poitiers. The worst burden of all was the direct tax known as _la
taille_. A man paid this on all his possessions in money and kind, and
it always amounted to a quarter of his property, sometimes to a great
deal more. The clergy and nobles were exempt from _la taille_, which
crushed the poor peasants and the smaller people to the earth.
In later years, Louis XIII.’s Minister was ready enough to tax these
suffering millions for the sake of absolutism and glory; but the young
Bishop of Luçon, not yet hardened by power, touched by the piteous
sight of thin hands worn by toil, the bread snatched from them by those
who made an unfair living out of the taxes, wrote to head-quarters at
Poitiers more than one letter of strong remonstrance, letters in which
a warm indignation pierces through the studied courtesy of the words.
He writes of “the misery of the place, the poverty of the people, the
excessive tax of the _taille_ which they have paid till now....” He
begs that the load they have to bear may be lightened. He reminds the
officials that their own town pays much less than it ought, and hints
very plainly that unless things are voluntarily set right, he will call
the higher powers of justice to his aid.
As one would naturally expect, the _traitants_ of Poitiers, worthy
forerunners of the farmers-general of a later century, took very little
notice of the appeal or the veiled threat of M. de Luçon--a young
fellow, a “new broom,” who might as well mind his own ecclesiastical
business and let the King’s taxes alone. But he was as good as his
word. Two months later he wrote to the Minister of Finance, the
all-powerful Sully, to lay the grievances of his flock before him; the
appeal being seconded by his courtier brother, Henry de Richelieu. Thus
the Poitevin tax-gatherers had a taste of Richelieu’s quality.
The spiritual needs of the diocese were quite as crying and as serious.
Religious matters all over France were in a terrible state, and nowhere
worse than in Bas-Poitou. “Error and vice were rampant,” says a writer
of the time. Where the Church was concerned, Christianity seemed
extinct; and Huguenot zeal had died down into political discontent.
Church property was misused, wasted on pensions to princes and
courtiers; the bishops were worldly and non-resident, the monasteries
were scandalously corrupt, and their revenues often in lay hands; the
parish clergy were ignorant and poor, and the long civil wars had made
havoc with the churches; many had been desecrated, put to profane uses,
if not destroyed altogether. It was only forty or fifty years since
the “Monk” Richelieu and men like him had stormed over Poitou, and the
memory of his exploits was still green.
The consequence of all this was a state of morals and civilisation
which has been described by Michelet--not without exaggeration,
possibly--in his terrible chapters on witchcraft in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. Dark and cruel superstitions haunting
the God-forsaken villages; horrible Mumbo-Jumbo rites, relics of
heathenism, performed on lonely heaths or in the shadow of the
forests; families in which black magic and sorcery were handed down
from father to son, from mother to daughter--such were the discoveries
lying in wait for any active bishop who visited his diocese in the year
1609.
Armand de Richelieu was such a bishop; and the horror of these early
experiences may partly explain the Minister’s terrible severity, many
years later, towards Urbain Grandier, the unworthy priest who was
accused of bewitching the Ursuline nuns of Loudun.
During his residence, from 1609, with intervals, to 1614, Richelieu
threw all his young strength into the labour of civilising and
christianising Bas-Poitou. Travelling into every corner of the
province, he preached, confirmed, scolded, advised, converted. Great
and small had to listen to his admonitions. His passion for order and
discipline brought new and amazing experiences to a parish clergy which
had lived as it listed, idle, drunken, immoral, in the happy delusion
that no one would ever interfere. Richelieu interfered to some purpose.
One of his chief objects was to get the appointment of the curés into
his own hands. Many livings--if they could be called so--were in the
gift of private persons, subject to an episcopal consent which was
never refused: others belonged to abbeys, and this often meant, in
the end, the patronage of some prince or noble to whom the monastic
revenues were paid. For instance, a hundred benefices in the diocese of
Luçon alone, and many more elsewhere, belonged to the great Benedictine
abbey of Saint-Michel-en-l’Ermitage, of which the Comte de Soissons,
the King’s cousin, was the titular abbot. There is little to be said in
that prince’s favour; he was a man of “mœurs infâmes”; but Richelieu,
in later years his son’s bitter and powerful enemy, had occasion to
write M. le Comte a quite grovelling letter of thanks in 1609. He
had made the Bishop his “vicar” with regard to all the clergy in the
diocese of Luçon who depended on the Abbey of Saint-Michel.
Richelieu dealt with private patrons in a more plain-spoken way.
“One called André” having been preferred to a benefice by a great
lady, Madame de Sainte-Croix, the Bishop flatly declined to allow so
incapable a man “to lead a flock dear to Jesus Christ.” Yet, with all
his firmness, he was kind. If the patroness would set a good example to
the diocese by placing her living among those to which, after careful
examination, the Bishop undertook to appoint the best men, he was
willing that André should try his powers with the rest. So strong, so
wise and religious, are the arguments of the letter, that its result
is not surprising. Madame de Sainte-Croix sent her presentation to the
Bishop _en blanc_. Nobody knows what became of the unlucky André.
Richelieu was not satisfied with appointing his curés; he was
determined to educate them. Here he was moved by the new spirit of the
time, working so actively in the Jesuits, led by the King’s confessor,
Père Cotton, and no less in Pierre de Bérulle, the evangelist, who
had just introduced into France the Congregation of the Oratory. His
second house in France, for the express purpose of training men for the
ministry, was established at Luçon during these years of Richelieu’s
residence. Bérulle, a man of old family and of most lovable character,
was at this time an intimate friend and associate of the Bishop of
Luçon. There came a day of estrangement and political enmity.
Richelieu’s provincial life was by no means solitary. The young and
sturdy Bishop of Poitiers, M. de la Rocheposay, son of a bold fighter
of the League and worthy of his name, was a neighbour and friend of
Poitevin origin; and attached to both cathedrals there were men of
distinction, of theological science, burning with zeal not only for the
advance of religion and the conversion of heretics, but for the honour
and glory of the bishops they loyally served. One of the grand vicars
of M. de Poitiers was no less a personage than Duvergier de Hauranne,
afterwards known as the Jansenist Abbé de St. Cyran, the famous
director of Port-Royal. One of the canons, afterwards dean, of Luçon
was Sébastien Bouthillier, Abbé de la Cochère, to whose devotion and
cleverness, now and in later years, Richelieu owed much. These young
men, with others like-minded, fought hard for the Catholic religion in
their province of Poitou; preaching, teaching, holding disputations
with Protestant ministers--a work in which the Bishop of Luçon, with
his learning fresh from the Sorbonne, distinguished himself highly.
They also had their “diversions” in common, which consisted in hard
study, keen argument, and preparation for further spiritual conquests.
As for real spirituality of mind, there is no doubt that Saint-Cyran,
mystic, Augustinian, uncompromising, outstripped his companions as far
on that path as Richelieu did on another--the path of political genius.
Luçon in its fever-haunted marshes did not keep the Bishop long. He
lived much at Coussay, a priory and small château belonging to his
family, in a more hilly and healthy part of his diocese not so far from
Poitiers. He seems to have been happy here, away from his quarrelsome
Chapter and near his friends: the traditions of Coussay, we are told,
still preserve his memory; not as the great Cardinal, but as “prieur
et châtelain” of that little village and domain. He was also a good
deal at Les Roches, another priory he possessed between Chinon and
Saumur, close to Fontevrault, in the north-west corner of his diocese.
Here he was very near his old home, Richelieu, where his mother, aunt,
and younger sister were still living, the fierce old Rochechouart
grandmother having been some years dead.
At Les Roches, it seems, began the famous and lifelong friendship
between Armand de Richelieu and François Le Clerc, Marquis du Tremblay,
now a man of two-and-thirty, thin, red-haired, deeply marked with the
small-pox, who had already made his name as Père Joseph, a Capuchin
monk of extraordinary talent and energy. The future _Éminence grise_
was Angevin by birth, had been a soldier, but at twenty-two had
thrown himself passionately into “religion.” Before Richelieu came to
Luçon, Père Joseph was carrying on a valiant conflict of eloquence,
persuasion and violence combined, with the Protestants throughout these
western quarters, many of whom were considerable by descent and actual
power. Père Joseph was attracted by difficulty. Whatever the truth
about his after life may be--history tells contrary tales--there is no
doubt that at this time he was an ardent reformer in his own sense of
the word and a man of deep personal religion. It was owing to him, and
to his friend the Abbess of Fontevrault, Eléonore de Bourbon, aunt of
Henry IV., that a Capuchin convent was established at Saumur in the
teeth of the Protestant governor, Du Plessis-Mornay. From this convent
and others, notably Fontenay, in the diocese of Luçon, Lent preachers
were sent out into all parts. Richelieu welcomed them with “extreme
joy.” But it was not till a year or two later, after King Henry’s
death, when his views and hopes were fast extending beyond diocesan
limits, that he and Père Joseph found themselves working together in
the difficult and complicated affairs of the Abbey of Fontevrault.
CHAPTER III
1610-1611
“Instructions et Maximes”--The death of Henry IV.--The difficult road
to favour--Père Joseph and the Abbey of Fontevrault.
If some of those who were privileged to watch, with short-sighted eyes,
Richelieu’s apostolic work in the diocese of Luçon, could have read his
thoughts and sometimes looked over his shoulder, they might have been
somewhat startled. Probably his contemporaries knew nothing of certain
rapidly scrawled sheets in the Cardinal’s familiar writing, which
were discovered by M. Armand Baschet among the old manuscripts of the
Bibliothèque Nationale, about thirty years ago. The sheets are headed,
“Instructions et Maximes que je me suis donné pour me conduire à la
Cour.” At first the date was a little disputed; but internal evidence
seems to show that Richelieu wrote these pages of notes in the winter
of 1609, or early in 1610, when at the background of his thoughts,
apparently all busy with evangelising Bas-Poitou, the desire for public
life and power was waxing stronger every day. It was not likely indeed
that such a young race-horse, keen, nervous, swift and delicate in body
and brain, would long be contented to plough the heavy wastes of the
muddiest diocese in France.
In his hours of solitude he dreamed of King and Court, and planned
every detail of behaviour that might please the great Henry. From an
eastern window, one may fancy, he gazed over the wide plains towards
Paris, his Jerusalem, the real centre of his worship, the goal of
that flaming ambition which, with him, largely usurped the place
of all other passions. Then he wrote down his dreams, so clear, so
businesslike, so full of prudence and self-control, that they could
hardly fail to come true. It would have been amazing if the genius that
so vividly pointed him the way had not led him to the height of his
desires.
It seems worth while to give a few extracts from this curious _Mémoire_
for the sake of the light it throws on Richelieu’s mind. He changed
very little until absolute power made careful personal observation and
dissimulation unnecessary.
Through all his pages there is only one mention of God or of religion;
with this his first paragraph abruptly begins.
“There is so much licence and there are so many kinds of diversions,
that if one does not give to God the first thoughts and the first hours
of the day, it is hard, amid company and business, to serve Him at
all.... I will therefore choose a lodging which is not far either from
God or from the King.”
He thinks it is hardly advisable to make a point of waiting on the King
every day. That is all very well for courtiers who have nothing else to
do.
“... But in the first days after my arrival at Court, I shall present
myself every day until he has been pleased to speak or to listen to me
... after which it will be enough to appear in Paris once a week and
at Fontainebleau every third day.... If one presents one’s self merely
to see the King, one must stand within sight when he is at table; if
to speak to him, one must draw near to his chair. Take care to stay
discourse when the King drinks.
“The words most agreeable to the King are those which exalt his
royal virtues. He likes keen points and sudden repartees. He prefers
those who speak boldly--but with respect. It is well to fall back
constantly on the cadence that by ill luck one has been able to do him
service only in small matters, and that there is nothing too great or
impossible to be done, with good will, for so good a master and so
great a king.
“It is important to notice which way the wind blows, and not to take
him in a humour when he cares to speak to no one and kicks against
everybody.
“As to other great men, one must visit them ... remembering that
sacrifices are paid both to the harmful and the favourable gods.... The
best time is the morning, in order to accompany them when they go out,
and I think this the most honourable. Some choose the time when they
return for dinner, and run the risk of being sent off without a word.”
He speaks scornfully of the “strange servitude” endured by those who
“follow tables” day by day, wasting hours in search of a dinner.
“... At table, if one must talk, one should take care that the
discourse is of indifferent matters; history; descriptions of
countries; towns; powerful families; laws and customs. Questions of
State, commerce, astrology, fortification, music and other science ...
without pedantry, and without showing too curiously what one knows.
“And because in these conversations one learns more than by reading the
best books ... they should be carefully noted down in a book, of which
every page should be marked with some significant word or name.”
M. Baschet, and other students of Richelieu’s manuscripts, have noticed
how curiously these words foreshadow the habit of his whole life--to
write everything down, “maxims, reflexions, facts,” for correct
remembrance and future use.
He dwells much on the need of discretion in dealing with the great,
their sayings and doings, and on the serious peril that lies in
pleading for one’s friends, so often malcontent and unreasonable. But
he will not, he says, follow in the path of those who promise and do
not perform.
As to more personal caution: “Turn away the ear from those who would
tell of other people’s business, and never repeat what they say, still
less what they do.”
This was hardly the favourite maxim in after life of the man who
employed more spies than any one else in history.
Letters to friends he finds perilous, having had experience of the same.
“In letters written to friends one must take care that there is nothing
to injure either him who writes or him who receives, for these are
occasions much spied upon and desired by enemies, and which bring about
repentance and confusion. As to that, I remember what I wrote on the
execution of the Maréchal de Biron, whereof the King spoke to me, and
after His Majesty Monsieur de Villeroy....
“In letters of compliment which may be shown, I shall write no new
thing and no opinion except as to common things which may be published
without peril.... I shall keep a copy of important letters.... Writing
to the same person several letters in one packet, I shall mark by
number those first to be read.... I shall reply to all those who write
to me, and shall forget nothing which should be considered either in
their quality or their discourse. No one, not even a Knight of the
Order, should be dispensed from answering a letter from one greatly his
inferior.... One should read letters more than once before answering
them.... Letters of importance, carefully kept, serve more purposes
than one thinks when one receives them.... The fire should keep
those which the casket cannot keep with safety.... I shall carefully
cultivate the acquaintance and friendship of one or two Commissioners
of the Post, in order that letters may be more faithfully delivered and
forwarded with care and diligence....”
So much for correspondence. The later notes deal with a courtier’s most
difficult study, dissimulation, and here, as elsewhere, it strikes one
how large a part of Richelieu’s commanding genius lay in “an infinite
capacity for taking pains.” His advice to himself is mostly--“Silence.”
“Not to publish abroad what has been said in confidence: Not to divulge
any affair that may cause scandal: Not to discover one’s own plans,
which being discovered may fail: Not to show that we are aware of the
faults and the bad actions of others, because men with these faults
hate those who know them: Not to show that we perceive the ill-will
men bear to ourselves or to those whom we love: Not to show that we
know any harm men have done us, or that we feel ourselves offended: Not
to run any risk of brawls and quarrels.... To all these ends, silence
is necessary and is not reprehensible. And though it may be very hard
to live with one’s friends in this manner and to be silent as to
their affairs, nevertheless reason teaches us to fix our eyes on what
signifies most, and to do no harm or prejudice to ourselves.”
Here, a thought of sinning against truth and sincerity seems to have
troubled the Bishop a little, for he ends by trying to explain how a
man may with difficulty steer between two risks, “the reproach of lying
and the peril of truth.” His counsel is, “Make a timely and cautious
retreat without downright falsehood, saying nothing that ought not
to be said.” Finally, “Be very reserved in words and in writing, and
neither say nor write what is not absolutely necessary.”
Altogether a severe set of rules to be followed by a fiery, proud and
impatient nature.
Imagination, of course, should not be allowed to play with history:
but considering that the exact date of Richelieu’s “Instructions et
Maximes” is not and never can be known, one may venture to fancy that
he laid down his pen on a certain day in May 1610, just as the post
from Paris had clattered into his courtyard, bringing crushing news for
France and for himself. Henry, “un si bon maître et si grand Roy,” had
been stabbed to death by the fanatic hand of Ravaillac, leaving his
country in the hands of a weak woman just crowned, a melancholy little
boy, and a group of princes and great nobles, greedy of money and power.
We have the very letter in which this news came to Richelieu. His
faithful Sébastien Bouthillier was in Paris at the time, and wrote to
him immediately after the tragic event. He had intended, he said, to
send him an account of the Queen’s coronation; but had been interrupted
by “the most strange and fatal accident.”
“On Friday, the 14th, His Majesty had gone to the Rue Saint-Denis to
see the preparations for the Queen’s entry, and, returning, was in the
street called de la Ferronnerie, when a wicked man, or rather the most
execrable monster on earth, climbed on the hinder part of the coach
inside which His Majesty was, and, unrestrained by the respect and
fear due to the Lord’s anointed and the greatest prince in the world,
attacking him from behind whose face brought terror to his enemies and
assurance to all his subjects, gave him two blows with a knife, of
which the first was not mortal, although both went through the body.
When the report ran through Paris that the King was dead, you cannot
imagine, Sir, the grief of all the people, the amazement of the nobles,
every one sad and cast down; and yet, in the midst of this general
sadness, it was courageously resolved to establish the Queen as regent,
so that, three hours after the catastrophe, the King having expired,
the Court of Parliament assembled at the Augustins, M. le Prince de
Conti, MM. de Guise, d’Épernon, de Montbazon and many others being
present, and verified the letters patent of the Regency which the late
King had caused to be made out.”
The Abbé goes on to describe the sorrowful and loyal reception of the
young Louis XIII., on Saturday, at the Palais de Justice, and then adds
what he knows will interest his Bishop more than any other Parisian
news he can send him at the moment.
“I must tell you that M. le Cardinal du Perron shows on all occasions
the esteem in which he holds you; for I hear that when there was talk
a few months ago, in his presence, of the young prelates of France,
and when some one spoke of you in terms of praise, according to the
reputation you have gained, M. le Cardinal said that you should not be
counted among the young prelates, that the oldest ought to give way to
you, and that for his own part he was ready to be an example to the
rest. M. de Richelieu, to whom this was said, repeated it to me in so
many words.”
This penetrating Cardinal du Perron, Archbishop of Sens, was one of the
loftiest ecclesiastical figures of the time. Theologian and politician,
he had been Richelieu’s chief patron in Paris, and his words, as
Sébastien Bouthillier very well knew, were not a mere piece of flattery
addressed to Richelieu’s brother.
Though the terror and excitement in Paris were much greater than
Bouthillier reported, France, as a whole, seems to have kept its
head at this tragical time, the provinces remaining quiet. This may
have been due to the fact that the news, as it travelled down with
rolling wheels, galloping hoofs, running feet, into the depths of the
country, caused more grief than surprise. It had long been prophesied
that Henry would die a violent death, and such prophecies, no doubt,
sometimes bring their own fulfilment. For the last four or five years,
every natural marvel or disaster had been counted as an evil omen
for the King. “Heaven and earth,” says Péréfixe, “had given only too
many prognostications of what happened to him. A very great eclipse
of the sun, which came to pass in the year 1608; a terrible comet,
which appeared in the preceding year; quakings of the earth; monstrous
births in divers parts of France; a rain of blood, which fell in
several places; a great plague, which afflicted Paris in the year 1606;
apparitions of phantoms, and many other prodigies, held men in dread of
some horrible event.”
The King’s death was actually reported in Italy, Spain, and even
Flanders, some time before it took place; written predictions were
found in churches, and bells tolled of themselves; women, especially
nuns, had frightful dreams and visions of murder; it was even known
that Ravaillac, the melancholy madman of the Angoumois, was consulting
his conscience as to whether a King who contemplated war with Catholic
Spain ought to live or die. This tale reached the Queen, through an
unlucky woman, the Dame d’Escoman, whose reward for having meddled in
the matter was imprisonment for life. That Marie de Médicis, supported
by her Concini favourites, secretly wished and plotted for Henry’s
death, is probably one of the most cruel slanders ever invented by the
enemies of a queen.
The prophecies and portents were not unknown to the King, and although
he was certainly neither timid nor credulous, they depressed his gay
spirit. During those last months he appeared, says Péréfixe, “as if
he were condemned to death.” A heavy presentiment weighed upon him.
He dreaded the Queen’s coronation--“ce maudit sacre”--and told Sully
that he knew he would die in a coach. Indeed he, so daring in war, had
long been curiously nervous when driving in the Paris streets; and
on the fatal day, though he wished to visit the Arsenal, where his
friend and Minister lay ill, he doubted and hesitated before leaving
the Louvre. “Shall I go? Shall I not go?” he said several times to the
Queen. Alarmed at his strange dejection, Marie begged him to stay; but
he kissed her affectionately, bade her adieu, and went straight to his
death in the Rue de la Ferronnerie.
Thus the Bishop of Luçon was deprived of the royal patron from whom
he had hoped so much. But he seems to have wasted very little time
in mourning his own and the country’s loss. His first thought was to
bring himself before the Queen, to gain a footing in the new Court,
different in many ways from the old. And this did not appear to be a
difficult task for a young and quick-witted man. The day of old men,
old soldiers, old courtiers and friends of “le Béarnais,” was over.
The Bishop of Luçon had already friends and supporters in the Regent’s
intimate circle. His brother and brother-in-law, Henry de Richelieu
and René de Vignerot, Seigneur du Pont-de-Courlay, were among her most
favoured courtiers. The Marquise de Guercheville, her lady of honour,
accustomed to courts since the days of Catherine de Médicis, was a
connection on the Du Plessis side; and two at least of the young maids
of honour bore familiar family names--Pont-de-Courlay, Meilleraye.
At this time, too, the Père de Bérulle, Richelieu’s personal friend,
had great influence with the Queen, and the same might be said of the
Père Cotton, the late King’s confessor. The Jesuits did not yet regard
Richelieu as an enemy.
It was not till after long delays, however, that the Bishop of Luçon
reached the Queen-Regent’s distinguished favour and the front of
affairs. His first step was a hurried and an unlucky one. On the 22nd
of May he wrote out a curious document, a kind of oath of allegiance
and declaration of loyalty to the young King and his mother, from
himself as Bishop and Baron, his dean, canons, and clergy. He sent
this paper to his brother in Paris, begging him to deliver it into the
Queen’s own hands. Henry de Richelieu’s worldly wisdom at once refused
this favour. Such zeal was quite out of place, he said: _Cela ne se
fait pas_: nobody else in the kingdom had done anything of the sort,
and he, an experienced courtier, would not allow his forward brother
to push himself by such means. Bouthillier was employed to send this
discouraging reply to the Bishop, whose restless eagerness it hardly
served to check.
It convinced him, indeed, that nothing was to be done from a distance,
and that the best of relations and friends would not help a man who was
not on the spot to help himself. Early in June we find him writing to
Madame de Bourges about a permanent lodging in Paris. As he intends to
spend some time there every year, he wants advice as to situation and
cost, also as to furniture, tapestry, plate, wine, etc. Poor as ever
in purse, he is no less determined to make a good show in the capital:
“C’est grande pitié que de pauvre noblesse, mais il n’y a remède:
contre fortune bon cœur.”
He went to Paris, and remained there for some months; but it was an
unhappy and a disappointing visit. During these early days of her
regency, Marie de Médicis had neither power nor leisure to make new
friends. Concini, Maréchal d’Ancre, and his wife Leonora, reigned at
the Louvre, though hardly yet outside it. The peace of the kingdom,
according to Richelieu’s own _Memoirs_, depended on the princes--Condé,
Soissons, d’Épernon, Guise, and their like. In these first months they
kept it unbroken, and all, Parliament, nobles, statesmen, churchmen,
municipalities, governors of provinces, were ready “to serve the King
under the guidance of the Queen.” The Huguenots were pacified, for
the moment, by the renewal of the Edict of Nantes. But the “grands
de la cour” did not give their allegiance for nothing. Henry’s old
Ministers, holding on to power with many searchings of heart, were
forced to consent to the enormous bribes demanded by everybody. These
“gratifications extraordinaires” were scattered with open hand among
greedy nobles and courtiers, and, added to the Queen’s own personal
extravagance, were likely soon to empty Henry’s precious coffers, so
painfully filled. As to the Duc de Sully, whose rough temper, bad
manners and comparative honesty had long made him unpopular at Court,
a conspiracy among the nobles forced on his retirement in the winter
of 1610. All these warring interests and anxieties, with visits from
special foreign embassies, with the young King’s coronation at Rheims,
with the question of war or peace beyond the frontiers, made a social
whirlpool of Paris and the Court.
The young provincial Bishop, without money or claims, whose few
personal friends were naturally more interested in their own affairs
than in his, found himself left behind in the race for power and
fortune. His old enemy, fever, seized on him again and laid him low:
Paris proved more unhealthy than even the marshes of Luçon. Terribly
depressed by illness, he was irritated and annoyed by letters from his
Cathedral chapter, complaining of disorders in the diocese, and he
wrote sharply in answer, following his letters early in the year 1611.
There was no advantage to be gained by staying in Paris, neglected and
obscure.
Through all the first half of this year, Richelieu was in a Slough
of Despond both mental and physical, brooding over difficulties and
disappointments, and constantly ill with fever. It seems that in these
dark days Père Joseph was his good angel.
The clever Capuchin had a troublesome affair on hand: the management of
a woman who, though “illustre religieuse et grande servante de Dieu,”
was resolved to follow her own way and not that which director, Pope
and King had marked out for her. Père Joseph was a crusader by nature,
and a reformer to the backbone, with a fiery obstinacy and positive,
autocratic will. He had already reformed several convents in Poitou,
in which the civil war, the invasion of an outside world, had strangely
travestied the religious life. Some of these convents belonged to the
great Benedictine Order of Fontevrault; and even in the Mother House
itself, under the gentle and charitable guidance of Madame Eléonore de
Bourbon, the strictness of the old Rule was half forgotten.
Madame Antoinette d’Orléans, of the Longueville family, the young
widow of the Marquis de Belle-Isle, had become a nun at Toulouse, at a
convent of the Feuillantines, and asked nothing better than to spend
her remaining days there. But she was known to Père Joseph as a woman
like-minded with himself, an enthusiast and a saint; and when, in 1604,
a bull of Pope Paul V. appointed her Coadjutrix of her aunt the Abbess
of Fontevrault, the young reformer welcomed her as an ally in his work.
And as far as outside convents were concerned, she did not disappoint
him. But though she loyally helped and supported the old Abbess in
the government of the Order, her heart was never at Fontevrault. Her
religious ideals were totally different from those of the two hundred
or more Sisters who marched with such stately dignity through the
venerable cloisters and took their high place in the choir where
Plantagenets slept. Their rich possessions, their amusements--innocent
enough, for Fontevrault, owing to the character of its long and regal
line of abbesses, was never seriously touched by scandal; their
little parties and cabals and gossip--good women, simple in faith and
practice, but not lofty-minded or mystical: all this fell far below the
standard of Madame d’Orléans, and her one desire was to escape from her
dignity, to return to her “dear solitude.” As she had never formally
accepted the office of Coadjutrix, with the prospect of succession,
this did not seem impossible.
The difficulty was that Père Joseph would not let her go. In her
authority and influence he saw the only means by which the reform of
the great Abbey might be carried through. There were divisions in the
community; some of the nuns being ready to welcome a change, others
strongly opposed to it. Père Joseph and Madame de Bourbon both saw that
no unanimity was to be hoped for, as long as the future was known to be
uncertain.
Père Joseph took the matter into his own hands, and settled it by a
_coup d’état_, secret and sudden. After a private consultation with the
King in Council, he wrote to the Pope; and Paul V., convinced by his
arguments, commanded Madame d’Orléans, under pain of excommunication,
to accept her office immediately with all the duties it involved, and
to assume the government of the Order, with the certainty of succeeding
her aunt as Abbess of Fontevrault.
The command fell on Madame d’Orléans like a thunder-bolt, but she
could only obey. The consequence was what Père Joseph had desired and
foreseen. The new ruler, once forced to rule, advanced “à pas de géant”
in the appointed way. In one short week Fontevrault was reformed; every
one of the nuns accepting the inevitable, all giving up their worldly
indulgences, and returning to the old strict regulation of work and
prayer.
This happy state of things went on for two years, and Père Joseph,
seeing his reformation well at work, was occupied with his other
duties as a director of souls--especially of that of the Duchesse de
Montpensier, living retired at Champigny and mourning both her husband
and her father, the Capuchin Duc de Joyeuse, who did not long survive
his son-in-law--when Madame d’Orléans played him the same trick he
had played her. She wrote secretly to the Pope, imploring him to
have compassion on her trouble of mind, explaining how seriously her
“tumultuous occupations” interfered with her personal sanctification,
and praying him to withdraw his command that she should succeed Madame
de Bourbon and to allow her, on her aunt’s death, to return to her
beloved Feuillantines of Toulouse. She begged His Holiness to inquire
into the matter through commissaries of his own, without consulting
Père Joseph. The Pope did as she wished, and she received full liberty
to go where she pleased. Then she sent for Père Joseph and told him
all, on condition that nothing should be said to Madame de Bourbon.
The old Abbess was to die in peace, imagining that her Coadjutrix would
succeed her.
Père Joseph needed all his prudence and self-control, says his
biographer, to hide his vexation at being thus “joué par une Princesse.”
But the thing was done, and he made the best of it, secretly hoping
that, “women being naturally inconstant,” the joy of supreme authority
might yet induce Madame d’Orléans to change her mind.
On March 26, 1611, at the age of seventy-eight, Madame Eléonore de
Bourbon died. To all appearance, her Coadjutrix was ready to accept the
succession. She even seemed to listen with favour to the persuasions of
Père Joseph, who pointed out in glowing terms her duty to the Order.
It was near the end of Lent, and Madame d’Orléans held her peace until
after the Festival of Easter. On Low Sunday, having assembled the
Community, she announced to them that she was about to write to the
King and the Queen Regent, praying them to nominate an abbess in her
stead.
This was a heavy blow to Père Joseph, and the affair was complicated
by his knowledge of the fact that Madame d’Orléans did not now wish
to return to Toulouse, but dreamed of founding a new convent in the
province of Poitou, where the religious life, as she understood it,
would be lived in all devotion and austerity.
Père Joseph, who with all his cleverness and strength had an attractive
modesty, felt himself unequal to dealing alone with this reverend lady,
and with the discord and confusion she had caused at Fontevrault. This,
at least, was the reason he gave for his appeal to the Bishop of Luçon,
“whose superior and transcendent genius had enchanted him,” and who
happened to be residing very near Fontevrault, at his Priory of Les
Roches.
The Abbey of Fontevrault was quite independent of episcopal authority,
and it was only as representing the Pope or the King that any bishop
had the right to enter it. Père Joseph appealed to Richelieu as a
friend; and, judging from his lifelong devotion, it may be imagined
that he joyfully seized this opportunity of rousing the Bishop from the
state of fever-stricken depression in which he had returned from Paris.
Here, if ever, was a case of a man’s “sharpening the countenance of
his friend.” The dying flame was blown into life; hope took suddenly
the place of something very like despair. The Capuchin discussed his
difficulties with the Bishop, and they agreed that the whole question
must be laid before the Queen Regent. Therefore they travelled together
to Fontainebleau, where the Court was staying, amid all the enchantment
of its exquisite spring.
Marie de Médicis, at this time, was far from happy. A year had passed
since Henry’s death; and to a woman both lazy and power-loving, the
quarrels, ambitions, jealousies, of the princes and courtiers, each day
harder to satisfy, were a constant torment; matters not being improved
by the insolent pride of Concini, who posed as the equal of them all.
The envoys from Poitou, asking nothing for themselves--no one dreamed
that these two men, one ugly, grave, humble in appearance, the other
delicate, worn, exhausted, would one day rule France and influence
Europe--were graciously received by the Queen; and it appears that Père
Joseph, in a few moments of private conversation after the Fontevrault
business had been explained, spoke to her of his companion in terms
of enthusiastic praise, as “a man of sublime genius and extraordinary
merit, capable of the highest employments.” The words remained in the
Queen’s mind and bore fruit, though not immediately.
The Bishop and the friar returned to Fontevrault, bearing the royal
permission for the community to choose an abbess among themselves; but
in the presence and with the consent of the Bishop of Luçon and Père
Joseph. The solemn election took place in the summer, when the Grand
Prioress, Madame Louise de Lavedan de Bourbon, was naturally chosen.
Madame Antoinette d’Orléans retired to Lencloître, a half-ruined
convent of the Order near Poitiers, and was there joined by many nuns
from all parts of France, and even from Fontevrault itself, who desired
to lead a stricter life under her guidance. It was not long before she
founded, with the help and approval of Père Joseph and the Bishops of
Luçon and Poitiers, a congregation known as _Les Filles du Calvaire_,
independent of Fontevrault, the object of which was the practice of the
Rule of St. Benedict in all its austere purity.
Pushed constantly to the front by Père Joseph, and with no
unwillingness on his own part, the Bishop of Luçon added much to his
reputation by his conduct of these affairs; State affairs, they might
almost be called, considering the rank of those concerned and the
wealth and political importance of the great Order of Fontevrault.
CHAPTER IV
1611-1615
Waiting for an opportunity--Political unrest--The States-General of
1614--The Bishop of Luçon speaks.
Richelieu worked hard in his diocese for the next three years,
struggling all the while with ill-health and impatience. He went to
Paris once during this time and offered his services to the powerful
Concini, who received him graciously; but nothing more came of it. And
the Queen was for the present inaccessible. Another disappointment
was his failure to be elected as representative of his ecclesiastical
province, Bordeaux, at a convocation of the clergy which was held in
Paris in the early days of the Regency. On this occasion the Archbishop
of Bordeaux, Cardinal de Sourdis--nicknamed _Sordido_--showed himself
an enemy to the aspiring young man.
But no envious Metropolitan could keep Richelieu long in the
background. He was becoming a very popular figure in the west country,
of which Poitou and its learned capital were the centre. His private
life appears to have been blameless. He kept up an affectionate
intercourse with his own family. For his mother he was still “mon
malade,” from childhood a sickly, brilliant creature, a subject of
uneasiness and pride. His sister, Madame du Pont-de-Courlay, turned to
him for sympathy in a money loss or the death of a little child. He
never lost sight of his brother Alphonse, the Carthusian, whose refusal
had made him a bishop, and whom, in later years of power, he dragged
from his cloister to be Archbishop and Cardinal.
He was a favourite with most of his neighbours, clerical and lay. His
correspondence bears witness to the wideness of his acquaintance and
interests, both public and private; people appealed to him as a friend,
an arbitrator, and he never disappointed them. He was courteous, kind,
even tender in his language: “episcopal and benign.” He was on the
politest terms with such of the great men as occasionally crossed his
path: the Duc de Sully, governor of Poitou, now no longer a courtier
and an absentee; the Duc de Villeroy, still in office, father of his
friend M. d’Alincourt, and others of high rank and importance. His
letters to such men as these, as well as to his more intimate friends,
might have foreshadowed his coming greatness for those who had eyes
to see. To the general company, however, the writer whose well-turned
assurances and compliments had such a background of passionate ambition
for his own and for his country’s glory, was nothing but a clever
phrase-maker, a young man of seven-and-twenty who could talk and
argue, convert a few Protestants, deal discreetly with the wrangles of
religious women. And outside a limited circle the name of Richelieu was
probably unknown, except as that of a pensioned courtier of the Regency.
While the Bishop of Luçon waited for his opportunity, political and
religious unrest was deepening in France. Henry IV.’s policy of
opposition to the House of Austria and alliance with Savoy, Holland,
and the German Protestants, had been set aside very early in the new
reign, and two royal marriages were arranged to bind France closer to
the Holy See and Catholic Europe. Louis XIII. was to be married to the
Infanta Anna of Spain--known to history as Anne of Austria--and his
eldest sister, Élisabeth, to the Infant of Spain, afterwards Philip
IV. These marriages seem to have pleased nobody in France except the
Regent, her immediate Court circle and her Ministers, whose only hope
of keeping their place lay in her favour. The Foreign Secretary,
Villeroy, the Chancellor, Brûlart de Sillery, the Connétable de
Montmorency, were among the Queen’s advisers in this affair. Most
of the nobles, and especially the princes, were more or less in
opposition; the strengthening of the Crown by so close an alliance with
Spain did not suit their interests. Henry IV. himself, when the project
was first laid before him by the Spanish Ambassador in 1610, had not
listened encouragingly.
The Huguenot party was both displeased and alarmed. Assemblies were
held at Nîmes, at Saumur, at La Rochelle; but the leaders, such as
the Ducs de Bouillon and de Rohan--Sully’s son-in-law--were not ready
to proceed to civil war. Condé, at first throwing in his lot with
them, soon went farther. He gathered troops in the west and threatened
Poitiers, after publishing, with the other princes, a fierce manifesto
against the Regent and her advisers. The young Bishop of Poitiers,
Richelieu’s friend, took matters with a high hand, closed the gates in
the Queen’s name, and prepared to defend the town against Condé, with
the high approval of the future Abbé de St Cyran, a worthy member, like
himself, of the Church Militant. The Prince’s bands overran Poitou,
annoying the peaceable inhabitants, Madame de Richelieu among them,
exacting large sums and quartering themselves in the villages.
In a fiery letter to M. de Neufbourg, an officer of Condé’s ally, the
Duc de Mayenne, the Bishop of Luçon expresses his amazement that his
mother has been thought worthy of so little courtesy. “Be good enough,”
he says, “to exempt the parish of Saulnes, which belongs to Madame
de Richelieu, from the lodging of troops and the contributions they
demand. I would have written direct to him (M. de Mayenne) had not his
treatment of my mother made me aware that he either believes me to be
no longer of this world or that he deems me now and for ever incapable
of doing him any service. Therefore I address myself to you....”
Like his episcopal brother of Poitiers, Richelieu took his stand openly
on the side of Royalty and against the horde of greedy nobles who
caught at any pretext to add to their own possessions and power. It was
not only the political necessities of his later life that made him
their enemy.
The flame of civil war soon died down. In May 1614 the Queen signed the
treaty of St. Menehould, which pacified the princes, after some delay,
by granting most of their desires. Condé, Nevers, Vendôme, Mayenne,
Longueville, Bouillon and others received enormous pensions, as well as
fortresses and governments; last, not least, the States-General were
summoned, as the manifesto had demanded, to discuss the grievances
of the three estates of the realm. The Huguenot party had already
obtained some satisfaction. For the time, the Regent and her ministers
had bought victory: the arrangements for the Spanish marriages went
steadily on.
The Bishop of Luçon was directed by Sully, governor of Poitou, to
supervise “with gentleness” the election in his diocese of deputies for
the States-General. He did his duty, no doubt, in the matter; but the
election that interested him was that of the diocese of Poitiers. There
his friends were working for him. La Rocheposay, the warlike Bishop,
his lieutenant Saint-Cyran, and Richelieu’s faithful Bouthillier,
smoothed the way for his uncontested election as one of the two
deputies of the clergy of Poitiers. The old city, so lately in a stage
of siege, rang joy-bells on August 10, the appointed day. All over
Poitou, all over France, the bells were ringing, for every estate in
the kingdom hoped much from the States-General. It may at once be said
that rich and poor, great and small, were disappointed. What the bells
rang in was not liberty, release from taxes, confirmation of rights,
but the reign of Richelieu. And in consequence of that reign the voice
of France in her States-General was not heard again for one hundred and
seventy-five years--not until, in 1789, “the whirligig of Time brought
in his revenges.”
The States-General of 1614 were formally opened in Paris on Monday,
October 27. On Sunday took place the customary procession from the
great Convent of the Augustins on the left bank, along the quay,
winding through narrow streets crowded with spectators and hung with
tapestry, to the bridge over the Seine which led most directly to the
Cathedral of Notre Dame, where a solemn high mass was to be celebrated.
It was a procession gay with colour and variety, although most of the
clergy and all the Third Estate were in sober black. But the way was
kept throughout by the royal guards, Swiss and French, in their varied
liveries. Archers marched alongside, bearing immense tapers, faint
flames quivering in the chilly air of the early autumn morning. Many of
the deputies shivered, and complained of the cold.
It was a representative procession. The religious Orders, parish
clergy, and trade corporations of Paris, the canons of Notre Dame, the
doctors of the University--these led the way. Then came the hundred and
ninety-two deputies of the _Tiers État_, walking four by four, with
their distinguished President, Robert Miron, provost of the merchants.
Then a hundred and thirty-two nobles in Court dress with swords. Then
the clerical deputies, a hundred and forty, followed by the bishops and
archbishops in purple and the cardinals in red. Then the Archbishop
of Paris, bearing the sacred Host under a gorgeous canopy. Then the
boy-King, walking in white, his mother in deep black, her young
children, her attendant ladies and gentlemen; Queen Marguerite de
Valois, the “aunt” of the Royal Family, and various other great ladies,
princes, and nobles attached to the Court. After these followed the
whole Parliament and the Municipality of Paris, with many officials and
guards.
Like a wave of noise, colour and light, with its tramping feet and
flickering candles, under the heavy clangour of the great bells, the
procession rolls into Notre Dame, and the Cardinal-Archbishop of
Bordeaux, Richelieu’s hated Metropolitan, thunders out his sermon to
the Estates of France: “Fear God. Honour the King.”
The three Estates held their sittings in three of the vast rooms of the
Convent of the Augustins, but the opening ceremony took place in the
hall of the old Hôtel de Bourbon, east of the Louvre. There the little
King, a dark, solemn boy, whose majority, on entering his fourteenth
year, had lately been celebrated, sat enthroned “on violet velvet,
powdered with golden lilies.” On his right were the two Queens, Marie
and Marguerite, and the young Princess Élisabeth, the future Queen of
Spain. His brother Gaston, a lively, pretty child of five, his little
sisters Christine and Henriette Marie, sat on his left; a gorgeous ring
of princes, courtiers and great ladies surrounded them. In theory, the
body of the hall was kept for deputies; in fact, it was inconveniently
crowded by Parisians, chiefly hangers-on of the Court. “Tout était
plein de dames et de damoiselles, de gentilshommes et autre peuple,”
says Florimond Rapine, the chronicler. The deputies were indignant, and
it was long before all could find places. Then the wild, ill-assorted
assembly listened kindly to a few stammering words from Louis XIII.,
and impatiently to a long harangue from Chancellor Sillery, which
committed the Government to nothing.
The ceremonies of opening and closing were very much the same. Three
months of arguing and quarrelling, during which Paris was frequently in
an uproar, the Prince de Condé claiming homage that nobody would pay,
the Duc d’Épernon insulting the Parliament, gentlemen fighting in the
streets, the Estates themselves divided into violent parties for and
against the Pope and Spain, the Third Estate demanding the abolition
of pensions and privileges, the nobles and clergy angrily defending
their rights, brought the assembly once more together at the Hôtel de
Bourbon, in the presence of the Court.
Manners had not improved. Two thousand of the baser sort of courtiers,
men and women, with numbers of people of all kinds, had crowded into
the best places. Rapine saw “cardinals, bishops, priors, abbots, the
nobility and all the Third Estate, crowded and pushed without order,
respect, or consideration, among the pikemen and halberdiers.”
[Illustration: THE MAJORITY OF LOUIS XIII (LOUIS XIII AND MARIE DE
MÉDICIS)
FROM THE PICTURE BY RUBENS IN THE LOUVRE]
In the midst of this babel, the spokesmen of the three Orders had to
present to the King their _cahiers_, containing the result of their
stormy deliberations. First it was the turn of the clergy; and their
orator, chosen, like his fellows, by the influence of the Queen-Regent,
was the Bishop of Luçon.
He had already gained much credit, during the debates of the last
three months, for eloquence and judgment; he was one of the group of
young and brilliant bishops who supported Cardinal du Perron, always
his friend, in his efforts to bring the _Tiers État_ into harmony with
the views of the clergy. The burning question was an article resolved
on by the _Tiers_, demanding that the King’s complete independence of
every power, spiritual or temporal, except God alone, should be made
“a fundamental law of the State.” It was the old Gallican, anti-Roman
doctrine, which, as far as the middle classes of France were concerned,
had been growing in strength for some years. It had fought the League;
it opposed the Jesuits; it defied the authority of the Pope. It rose up
in anger against the courtly politicians who now, with their Spanish
alliances, were contradicting and nullifying the policy of Henry IV.
There were Gallicans among the clergy, but the majority were
Ultramontane, equally loyal to the Pope and to the Queen-Regent’s
government. Cardinal du Perron and his distinguished phalanx wasted
hours of eloquence--and the Cardinal was both a great orator and an
attractive man--in persuading the _Tiers_ to withdraw their obnoxious
article. Matters were made worse by the Parliament of Paris, Gallican
and anti-Spanish to the core, which openly supported the _Tiers_, as
also did Condé and his followers and the Huguenot party under Bouillon.
Forty years later, Louis XIV.’s whip was to teach both nobles and
Parliament the meaning of that divine right and absolute power which
they were now eager to claim for their kings. On this occasion the
article was referred to Louis XIII., and by his authority was expunged
from the _cahier_ of the _Tiers État_.
It was in a spirit of triumphant loyalty, therefore, both to his Order
and to the King--or rather, to the Queen and her councillors--that
Armand de Richelieu made the oration which gained him his first real
fame. He stood before the whole of France--all France that signified,
for even the humble millions were represented, though mostly by men
of law--slight and delicate, with a pleasant voice, an easy, graceful
manner, eyes bright and clear, yet thoughtful, a mouth both strong and
smiling under the thin moustache brushed sharply upwards, which always
gave him the look of a soldier.
His discourse lasted an hour, and gave great satisfaction to all his
hearers, who were struck by the discretion with which he touched on
many difficult subjects “without offending anybody.” It was indeed a
delicate task, to complain of the treatment bestowed on the Church
and her clergy by the chief authorities in the kingdom; to praise the
clergy, their learning, probity and self-denial, and to claim for
them a larger share in the management of State affairs; to point out
the many abuses of lay patronage; to condemn the excesses of some
Huguenots while declaring that no weapons but example, instruction
and prayer should be used against those who, “if blinded by error,”
yet lived peaceably under the royal authority; to remonstrate against
unfair taxation, corruption and bribery in high places; to demand
the reduction of pensions and the abolition of duels, according to
the laws of “the great Henry”:--and in the same breath to praise the
Queen-Regent for the great things she had already done in preserving
“peace, repose and public tranquillity,” chief of which was that
“sacred bond of a double marriage” which was soon to unite “the
greatest kingdoms of the world.” In short, while performing the full
duty prescribed by his Order, to make himself _persona grata_ to Marie
de Médicis, was a task worthy of Armand de Richelieu.
The Baron de Sénecé, spokesman of the nobles, followed the Bishop of
Luçon, but had little to say. On the other hand Robert Miron, who
spoke--on his knees--for the _Tiers État_, had a great deal. He drew
a frightful picture of the “wounds and sorrows” of the poor people
of France, their constant labour and heavy burdens. He complained
bitterly of the abuses in the Church, the privileges, oppressions,
public and private violence of the nobles, the delays and the
corruption of justice, the ravages of armed men.
“Without the labour of the poor people,” he cried, “where were the
tithes of the Church--the vast possessions of the nobility, their wide
lands, their great fiefs--the houses, the incomes, the heritages of
the Third Estate? And further, who gives your Majesty the means of
keeping up the royal dignity, of providing for the necessary expenses
of the State, within and without the kingdom? who gives the means of
raising men for the wars, if not the labourer and the taxes he pays?”
And he added those remarkable words: “It is to be feared that despair
may teach the poor people that the soldier is but a peasant bearing
arms, and that when the vinedresser takes up an arquebus, he may become
hammer instead of anvil.”
But Miron, like the other speakers, professed devoted loyalty to the
King, only begging that the royal authority might interfere to protect
the poor people. And Miron’s harangue, like the others, had no real
consequence whatever. Richelieu observes in his _Memoirs_ that the
States-General ended without advantage to anybody.
The deputies were dismissed, contumelious and discontented, and
returned to the provinces freshly burdened by their expenses.
The Bishop of Luçon went back to his diocese; but his speech was
printed by the famous Cramoisy. The Court consoled itself for a very
tiresome winter by one of the most magnificent Mid-Lent ballets that
Paris had ever seen.
CHAPTER V
1615-1616
Richelieu appointed Chaplain to Queen Anne--Discontent of the
Parliament and the Princes--The Royal progress to the South--Treaty
of Loudun--Return to Paris--Marie de Médicis and her favourites--The
young King and Queen--The Duc de Luynes--Richelieu as negotiator and
adviser--The death of Madame de Richelieu.
In the autumn of the year 1615 Richelieu was appointed chaplain to the
new young Queen of France, Anne of Austria. He owed this appointment
partly to the impression made by his good looks and talent on Marie
de Médicis, partly to the friendly intrigues of the Bishop of
Bayonne--afterwards Archbishop of Tours, and an adorer of the beautiful
Duchesse de Chevreuse. Owing to the troubled state of France and the
long delay of the royal entry into Paris, he did not enter upon his
duties till the late spring of 1616.
The easy triumph of the Court party over the rebel elements in the
nation had not lasted long. When the Parliament of Paris saw that the
States-General and all their talk had ended in nothing--no reform
of abuses, no strengthening of the law, while Concini, the foreign
favourite, now a Marshal of France and Lieutenant-General of Picardy,
was fast becoming the most powerful person in the kingdom--it raised
its voice in angry remonstrance. And the men of law did not stand
alone. “Derrière le parlement,” says M. Henri Martin, “il y avait les
princes, et à côté des princes, les huguenots.” In fact, a strong party
was making a new and final struggle against the Spanish marriages. The
voice of the English ambassador, Sir Thomas Edmunds, chimed in with
those of Condé, Bouillon and the Parliament, begging at least for
delay: in the present state of Europe, James I. found these marriages
“inopportune.” His eldest daughter, Elizabeth, had lately married the
Protestant Elector Palatine, nephew of the Duc de Bouillon and brought
up by him. England was thus strongly linked with the Protestant cause,
both in France and Germany.
But neither foreign opinion, Parliament, princes, nor cowardly counsels
in her own household--for her favourite Leonora, Concini’s wife, was
against her in this matter--could turn Marie de Médicis from her
intention. The King and the Ministers, under her orders, haughtily
denied that the Parliament had any right to interfere in affairs of
State. She tried, but in vain, to win over Condé and his friends. When
her failure was plain--Condé retiring into the country, publishing a
manifesto which demanded the delay of the marriages and the disgrace of
Concini and the old Ministers, and following up his words by raising
an armed force--she replied by arresting his friend Nicolas Le Jay,
a president of the Parliament and leader of the opposition there.
The guards seized him at five o’clock in the morning of August 17
and hurried him into a coach. On that same morning the whole Court,
conducted by the Ducs de Guise and d’Épernon with a strong body of
troops, set out on the long journey to the south. President Le Jay,
sorely against his will, followed the King as far as Amboise, where he
was left behind as a prisoner.
Concini--formerly Marquis, now also Maréchal d’Ancre--remained to
oppose the princes in Picardy, of which the young Duc de Longueville
was governor. The Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin (Montmorency-Laval,
Marquis de Sablé) was left with a royal army of 12,000 men to protect
and overawe Paris, already commanded by the guns of the Château de
Vincennes, and to keep a check on the Prince de Condé.
The royal progress to the south was slow and dangerous, with many
delays and annoyances. Travelling was not easy even in summer weather.
The long train of coaches, baggage-waggons and pack-mules, horsemen,
running footmen, with the large military escort, took three days to
travel the good road between Paris and Orléans, and then for some
unknown reason, perhaps the uncertainty of Condé’s movements, did not
arrive at Tours for ten days more. Here the Court was met by three
deputies from the Huguenot assembly at Grenoble, who had just missed
His Majesty at Paris, and who, “with more insolence than formerly,”
says Richelieu, pressed again upon him the demands of the _Tiers État_
and requested him to proceed no further on his journey, “in which they
were interested, not only as being of _la Religion prétendue réformée_,
but as good Frenchmen.”
In consequence of this and other disloyal proceedings, the King
publicly declared the Prince de Condé and all his adherents guilty of
high treason unless they laid down their arms within a month, and sent
his declaration to be registered by the Parliament of Paris.
The Court arrived at Poitiers on September 4, and was detained there,
to the Queen-mother’s great vexation, till the 27th. The little Madame
of thirteen, on her way to be married to the Prince of Spain, had an
attack of small-pox, and Marie herself suffered from an inflamed arm.
As Condé was already fighting his way across country with the object
of blocking the road to Spain, while the Duc de Rohan, with a small
Huguenot army, was preparing to second him by occupying Guienne and the
Bordelais, it appeared at one moment as if the royal marriages might be
effectually stopped.
Two persons profited by the delay. One was the Maréchale d’Ancre.
That mysterious Leonora, accused, probably falsely, of witchcraft and
so many other crimes, seized this opportunity to creep back into the
favour of her royal mistress and foster-sister, whom she, in concert
with the Minister Villeroy and others, had seriously annoyed by
advising her against pressing on the marriages. By devoted nursing of
the royal invalids, and by the help of her Jewish doctor, Montalto,
Leonora soon regained Marie’s selfish affection, to lose it once more,
and finally, before the end of her tragic life.
The other person who profited by the royal visit to Poitiers was the
Bishop of Luçon. On returning from Paris in the spring, feverish and
irritable, he had plunged deep in theological studies at his favourite
Coussay. It seems to have been a grievance that even his friends should
disturb him at his books. But when the Court arrived at Poitiers
and was detained there, all loyal persons of any distinction in the
province were bound to wait upon their Majesties. The Bishop of Luçon
was among the foremost in paying his duty. Certain vague talk of the
chaplaincy to Queen Anne now took solid shape, and he received the
promise of his appointment, which was definitely made in November, when
the Court was at Bordeaux. During the interval, it is evident that
Richelieu considered himself bound to the Queen-mother’s service. He
made it his business to send a report of the health of Madame, who was
left behind at Poitiers for a few days when the Court hurried forward;
and his letters to Marie de Médicis are full of grateful devotion.
The little French princess was conveyed to the Spanish frontier,
and the little Spanish princess was received in exchange. Under the
escort of the Duc de Guise and six thousand men--for the Huguenots,
under Rohan, made the journey perilous--she was brought to Bordeaux,
where the King and his mother awaited her. There the marriage was
finally blessed--it had already, in the case of both princesses, been
celebrated by proxy--and there the Court lingered on till the middle of
December, when it began its slow northward journey, not reaching Tours
till January 25, 1616.
The country through which the Court travelled was in a terrible state,
trampled and devastated by armies--“chose pitoyable et horrible,” says
Pontchartrain. In spite of the Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin, Condé had
crossed the Loire at Neuvy and was storming westward through Berry,
Touraine and Poitou, “pillant et saccageant,” says Richelieu, “tous
les lieux où il passoit.” Again Madame de Richelieu had her share in
the sufferings of the poor province, which seemed to her even worse
off than in the Wars of the League. Forty years she had lived at
Richelieu, and never had she seen such men or such ravages. “If these
armies believe in God,” she said, “it is as the devils do.” The army
of Bois-Dauphin was also marching south-westward, to protect the
progress of the Court. Friend or foe, royalist or rebel, it made no
difference in the wholesale robbery and cruelty which desolated the
villages, utterly destroying any lingering peaceful fruit of Henry’s
administration. Even Sully had now taken sides with Condé; and the Ducs
de Soubise and de la Trémoïlle had raised a fresh army of Huguenots
in Poitou. The wintry weather made everything worse. If the armies
caused the wretched peasants to suffer, they suffered themselves. An
icy rain was followed by hard frosts, snow, and “a great furious wind”;
thousands of men, on both sides, died of the wet and the bitter cold.
In Paris, boats and bridges were wrecked by the masses of broken ice in
the Seine.
The Bishop of Luçon, writing strong remonstrances on his mother’s and
his own behalf to the commanders, was also painfully interested in the
negotiations which began after the Court had reached Verteuil. He would
have been glad to be actively employed, but his time was not quite
come, and he could only look on, trusting to his friends--especially
Claude Barbin, an old acquaintance, the trusted financial secretary of
Marie de Médicis--to push his name and fortunes.
Both parties were tired of the struggle. The Court did not wish for
eternal war: the princes and their followers saw that, the Spanish
marriages once carried through, their wisest line of action was to make
a good bargain for themselves while posing as disappointed patriots.
The treaty of Loudun satisfied them for the time. Several of the
King’s older Ministers were sacrificed, notably Chancellor Sillery.
The Maréchal d’Ancre had to give up his command in Picardy, with the
strong city of Amiens, to the Duc de Longueville, but was consoled with
the military government of Normandy. A general amnesty was published:
President Le Jay was set at liberty, and the Comte d’Auvergne was
freed from his long confinement in the Bastille; the rights already
granted to the Huguenots were confirmed; Condé’s war expenses were
paid, amounting to 1,500,000 _livres_. Decidedly a good bargain; the
best he had ever made. “This time, it is true,” says M. Henri Martin,
“Condé’s soldiers had well earned their money: they had pillaged,
burnt, ravaged France with great zeal, from the banks of the Somme to
those of the Garonne.”
The other princes were also magnificently paid: their rebellion cost
the country, “according to Richelieu, more than twenty millions”; and
in the matter of places and governments, they had what they chose to
demand. In addition, Condé claimed the right of signing the decrees
of the Royal Council. The Duc de Villeroy, a clever old politician,
advised the Queen to grant this also. It was better, he said, to bind
Monsieur le Prince to the Court than to let him fortify himself in the
provinces. “Do not fear,” he said, “to put a pen in a man’s hand while
you are holding his arm.”
So ended the demonstration against the Spanish marriages. Marie de
Médicis gained her point: the princes found effectual consolation; and
the poor people of France, as usual, paid the bill. The salt tax, which
had been reduced, was raised to its former level, and new river tolls
were established.
The Court lingered at Tours and at Blois until the whole business of
the treaty was concluded, and made its triumphal entry into Paris
on May 16, 1616--an unlucky conjunction of numbers, according to
astrologers. The young Queen, a pretty and attractive girl in her
indolent Spanish way--somewhat petulant, and no wonder, considering the
miseries of the journey not to be escaped even by queens, and the cool
neglect of her boy-husband--sat in an open litter carried by mules,
for the better view of the citizens of Paris. The noise in the streets
was so great--bells, drums and trumpets, the clatter of arms (for the
city bands were all on foot and firing off their muskets)--that Her
Majesty’s mules pranced with terror, and she was obliged to take
refuge in her coach. But the welcome of Paris was undoubtedly hearty,
and if the Spanish marriage still caused discontent, it did not appear
openly. Indeed the Spanish embassy and their young Princess had only
to complain of the fact that the opposite party had gained most of
its ends in the treaty of Loudun, and that their enemy, the Prince de
Condé, with certain Huguenot magnates, his allies, appeared for the
moment to rule both Court and Council.
The Bishop of Luçon had preceded the Court to Paris. He had taken a
house in the Rue des Mauvaises-Paroles, in the quarter of the markets;
an old street which still existed in the early nineteenth century, but
has since been swept away. Here he was within easy reach of his Court
duties at the Louvre.
Under the high roofs of the palace, in the old round towers and
new pavilions and galleries, crowded in a labyrinth of rooms and
staircases, walled courts and gardens, surrounded by a confused noise
of building, especially towards the river, where the long gallery,
joining the Louvre to the Tuileries, was not yet finished, blocked to
the west, on the site of the Place du Carrousel, by narrow streets
of great hôtels and mean houses, churches, chapels, hospitals--lived
the young King and Queen with their households, and the Queen-Mother,
herself lodged in a low, dark, but richly furnished _entresol_, with
as many of her ladies, attendants, favourites, servants, as could find
room in the old rabbit-warren of so many and such ghostly memories.
At the moment, though her personal rule was not to last long, Marie
de Médicis, the Florentine, the “fat banker,” as Madame de Verneuil
disrespectfully called her, was the centre of power and the fountain
of promotion. It was therefore especially to her that the courtiers,
Richelieu among them, paid their devoted duty.
Marie de Médicis was at this time a handsome, heavy-looking woman of
forty-three; cold of temperament, grave and haughty in manner, yet
without real dignity; obstinate, yet weak; nervous, irritable, subject
to fits of violent anger with floods of tears; never affectionate
or caressing, even to her own children; fond of amusement, of
animals, dwarfs, freaks of nature; passionately eager for power and
magnificence; a lover of beautiful things, a generous but ignorant
patron of art; especially curious of precious metals and stones,
jewellery, bric-à-brac of all kinds; interested in architecture,
building and gardening. She laid the first stone of her palace of
“Luxembourg” in 1615, and in this very year 1616 she planted the
stately avenue of elms, known as the Cours-la-Reine, along the
river-bank beyond the gardens of the Tuileries. Splendid in her gifts,
she was wildly extravagant, as soon as it became possible, with
the money of the State. She was superstitious and religious, even
_dévote_, after her fashion, and the Church in France owed her much:
if not refined by nature or training, she was yet always on the side
of decency and moral reform. This is something to say for a woman who
was forced for years to live in a Court and a society so openly and
coarsely immoral, and to treat La Reine Margot as a friend and a sister.
At the time when Richelieu became attached to the Court, that eccentric
princess was no longer living in her palace opposite the Louvre.
She died in the spring of 1615, shortly after the closing of the
States-General. In his memoirs the Cardinal devotes several pages to
that “greatest princess of her time,” her talents and her charities.
At the Louvre, next to the Queen-Mother, the most profitable objects
of a courtier’s devotion were the Maréchal and the Maréchale d’Ancre.
They were Marie’s most intimate and inseparable friends. Unworthy of
such a position, no doubt: but the wife of Henry IV. was hardly happy
enough willingly to dispense with those who had followed her from
Florence. Leonora Galigaï, her nurse’s daughter, first the companion of
her childhood, had been appointed head of her maids: of low birth, but
extremely clever, and only too capable of managing her mistress; though
her own supposed account of her influence, “that of a clever woman over
a dull fool,” seems to have been one of the many inventions of her
enemies. A small, dark, ugly, keen-faced creature, Leonora had fallen
in love with the handsome adventurer Concini, who had followed the
Queen to France in search of fortune. They were married, and together
they climbed the heights they desired. Concini swaggered among nobles
and princes, the very type of a royal favourite. He was an insolent,
magnificent bully, with whom the greatest in the land had to reckon.
Yet, though envied and slandered, he was not entirely unpopular, even
at Court. Bassompierre observed that he was neither perfection nor a
fool. He had the daring courage which came of belief in his own lucky
star. He was good-natured and kind, except to his wife; with her, in
spite of their mutual interests, he quarrelled incessantly, and they
lived mostly apart. But the many scandalous jokes, songs and stories
which dealt with the supposed love-affairs of Concini and the Queen are
pronounced by modern historians to be without foundation.
For some years the husband and wife concerned themselves little with
politics. Money and position, especially money, of which Leonora was
excessively greedy, were their favourite objects. They bought a palace
in the Rue de Tournon, near the old Hôtel de Luxembourg, and furnished
it splendidly. But Concini lived chiefly in a house near the river, at
the south-east corner of the small garden of the Louvre, between it and
the old Hôtel de Bourbon. By a bridge from the house to the garden he
could communicate with his wife’s apartments, above those of the Queen.
Leonora left her rooms seldom and unwillingly, except for necessary
attendance on her mistress. She was a nervous invalid, and depended
much on Jewish doctors, quack remedies, and--according to her
enemies--the black art. We are also told, however, that she confessed
regularly and caused the Bible to be read to her. M. Batiffol, in his
picturesque study of the time, describes how she sat all day threading
beads or playing the guitar--she was a fine musician--in the midst
of rich hoards of every description: tapestry, embroidery, mirrors,
cabinets, carpets, cushions, counterpanes, of the most splendid
materials; endless quantities of gold and silver plate; wardrobes
and chests full of beautiful garments that she seldom wore. Beyond
these treasures, she cared for little but money: when she meddled
with politics, it was for the sake of money, or for her husband’s
advancement; and this last matter interested her keenly in the exciting
changes of that winter, which had carried her, sorely against her will,
on a most trying journey.
The return from that journey found the Maréchal d’Ancre, now
Lieutenant-General of Normandy, at the height of his power, though a
quarrel with the people of the markets lost him some popularity. The
reconstruction of the Ministry, the fall of Sillery, the temporary
superseding of Jeannin, President of the Council, and later of the
Duc de Villeroy, left the way open for clever men such as Barbin and
Mangot, both followers of Concini. Both admirers, too, of the Bishop of
Luçon, who very soon, by their means, was to become a Minister of State.
From the point of view of a courtier or a politician, the inmates of
the Louvre least worth considering were the young King and Queen. Both
were born in 1601, and in that summer were not quite fifteen years old:
two children, with the minds and tastes of children, on whom etiquette
weighed heavily, who were shy of each other, and cared only for their
own chosen companions and sports.
The little Queen seems to have been singularly childish, for a princess
brought up in the stately Court of Spain. Surrounded at first by her
Spanish ladies, who adored and petted her, she made grave ambassadors
anxious, though her coquettish beauty attracted the French. But there
was a lack of majesty, a love of jokes and games, an impatience of
everything serious, a quick and wilful temper, an amazingly short
memory, combined with a frank regret for her old life--“bien souvent
l’Espagne me manque,” she wrote home in the early days--hardly suitable
to a Queen of France. Her new subjects did not complain; in truth,
after the first rejoicings of her arrival, they saw little of her.
Sometimes she appeared at Court balls, ballets and _carrousels_,
brilliant in her fresh youth, with her dazzlingly white skin, large
eyes, chestnut hair, and the exquisite hands which were her crowning
beauty. Sometimes she drove out in a coach to Saint-Germain, and spent
the day hunting and hawking with the King, who hardly cared for her
company at any other time. Her chaplain, the Bishop of Luçon, attended
on her at the Louvre as a most formal duty. Personally, Anne never
liked him. Though not yet too terrible, he was always too serious for
her. But the Spanish ambassador wrote of him to Philip III.: “There are
not two men in France so zealous for the service of God, of our Crown,
and of the public weal.”
Time was to show whether his Excellency was right on all or any of
these points.
Louis XIII. had been an attractive little child, and was now a
handsome, simple, straightforward boy, whose health and temper,
unluckily, had been ruined by mismanagement. The diary of his
physician, Hérouard--curious if unpleasant reading--shows us a child
brought up on pills and potions quite as much as on food. Add constant
and severe whippings for every small fault, and we have the training
that Henry IV. and Marie de Médicis, here in entire agreement, thought
fitting for their eldest son. Long after Louis was King of France
the floggings continued, enraging interludes to Court etiquette and
ceremonies. “Give me less manners and less whipping!” the poor boy
cried one day, when his mother and her ladies rose and curtseyed on His
Majesty’s entrance.
No wonder that the face he turned to the outside world--including,
for him, his mother and his wife--was sulky and misanthropic. He had
affection to give; but it was all for the one or two special friends
who understood him, and who made it their business to help and indulge
him in the sports he cared about; hunting and hawking three or four
days a week in the forests and the open country near Paris; while in
the intervals there were rabbits and small birds to be caught in the
precincts of the Louvre and the Tuileries, and on wet days various
indoor amusements--cooking, carpentering, turning, teaching his little
dogs tricks, building card castles, and so on. He was passionately
fond of music. Court functions bored him terribly; and though forced,
after his majority, to attend the Council that ruled in his name, and
behaving there with sufficient dignity and intelligence, he took very
little active interest in affairs of State. This carelessness, though
more apparent than real, exactly suited his mother, her favourites and
her ministers. France was given to understand that the young King was
too delicate, too incapable, to act for himself in any public way.
It was not unnatural that all who had political or social ends to gain
should have thought it safe to ignore the King and Queen as children of
no account. But Louis XIII. had one trusted friend; and the Bishop of
Luçon, with many others, was bitterly to repent a too low estimation of
the powers of the Sieur de Luynes.
Charles d’Albert de Luynes was now a man of eight-and-thirty. He
was the eldest son of a small land-owner in Provence, and took
his territorial name from a fief near Aix, which was his mother’s
dowry. His two younger brothers, Honoré and Léon, who shared his
marvellous fortunes--one becoming Duc de Chaulnes, the other Duc de
Piney-Luxembourg--were known in their earlier days as Seigneurs de
Cadenet and de Brantes; Cadenet being a small island in the Rhône,
Brantes a farm and vineyard on a hill at Mornas. The three brothers,
all clever and amiable, caring for each other with an unselfish
affection rare in those days, began life as pages to François de
Daillon, Comte du Lude, a very great man in his own province of Anjou,
and a witty and audacious courtier. He and his friend M. de la Varenne
advanced the three young southerners to the service of King Henry IV.,
who gave them appointments in the Dauphin’s household. Even then the
three, generally liked and esteemed, says Richelieu, had but one pony
and one good coat amongst them.
It was not only his skill in falconry and all other kinds of sport
which endeared Luynes to his young master. From the first he made
himself his friend. He was a really good-natured man, as well as a fine
sportsman and an ambitious courtier, and he laid himself out to give
freedom and happiness to the oppressed, stammering boy. Louis learned,
from a child, to fly to Luynes in all his troubles. He was his constant
companion through the day, his chief playmate, the organiser of his
leisure time. At night in his dreams, often restless and feverish, the
boy would cry out for Luynes.
This high favour did not pass unnoticed, of course, by the Queen-mother
and Concini. They might have crushed Luynes in the early days, but they
took the line of propitiating him--a very great and fatal mistake,
according to Richelieu. Marie gave him the government of Amboise,
resigned by the Prince de Condé in 1615. She thought thus to make
Luynes her creature; and the Maréchal d’Ancre, who had watched him
anxiously for a short time, was deceived by his retiring manners into
thinking him a man of no real account except among birds, but probably
a useful friend, having the ear of the King.
Through this summer of 1616, the Bishop of Luçon was steadily advancing
in favour. Marie de Médicis appointed him her private secretary, with a
handsome pension, and employed him on several political missions. One
of these was of real importance and led to striking results.
In spite of the treaty of Loudun and all its advantages, the Prince
de Condé and his friends were still in a sulky frame of mind. Instead
of coming at once to Paris, the Prince lingered in his new province
of Berry, where the discontented showed signs of gathering round him
once more. This temper of his caused much anxiety to Marie, her new
Ministers, and the Maréchal d’Ancre. It seemed to them necessary that
the Prince should come to Paris. Any fresh disloyalty would be less
formidable there, and his support of the present government, if he
chose to give it, would be more valuable.
The Bishop of Luçon was sent to negotiate with the Prince at Bourges.
“The Queen sent me to him,” he says, “believing that I should have
sufficient fidelity and skill to dissipate the clouds of suspicion
which evil minds had falsely raised against her.” Her belief was
justified. Her envoy not only made the most of the promises with which
he was laden--promises from herself, from the Maréchal d’Ancre, and
last, not least, from Leonora--but he worked on the Prince’s mind by
his own clever and flattering persuasions, assisted probably by the
influence of Père Joseph and his brother, M. du Tremblay, who were
partisans of Condé.
The Prince came to Paris, and was honourably received by their
Majesties at the Louvre. Immediately all Paris was at his feet.
“The Louvre was a solitude,” says Richelieu; “his house was the old
Louvre”--on the site of part of the fortress of Philippe Auguste--“and
one could not approach the door for the multitude of people crowding
there. All who had any affair on hand addressed themselves to him; he
never entered the Council but his hands were full of petitions and
memoirs which had been presented to him, and which were granted at his
will.”
At first Condé enjoyed his new popularity and used his power with
moderation. Had he been a wise man, he might have kept it long; but he
was weak, dissipated, and fiercely ambitious, saying openly that he had
as much right to the throne as the King himself. The other princes,
especially the restless and intriguing Duc de Bouillon, worked upon his
discontent. Naturally, their first object was the ruin of the Maréchal
d’Ancre. Each of them had grievances of his own. Even the Ducs de Guise
and d’Épernon, loyal to the Crown, were ready to draw their swords on
the favourite. The former Ministers, the Parliament, the people of
Paris, were all on the same side, and Concini’s life, darkly plotted
against in high places, was openly threatened in the street. One day,
going alone to visit the Prince, who was entertaining the English
ambassador, Lord Hay, he had a narrow escape of being killed by the
servants.
Concini was a brave man, but he realised his danger, and both he and
his wife were on the eve of escaping from France. Suddenly, however,
the whole face of things changed. The Queen-mother, solemnly warned
by the Duc de Sully, saw that some bold step was necessary if she was
to save herself, her friends, even the young King, from serious peril.
For there were again grumblings of civil war in the provinces, where
the Duc de Longueville was attacking the last fortress in Picardy which
remained in Concini’s hands.
The Ministers Barbin and Mangot, with the Bishop of Luçon, advised a
_coup d’état_, and it was carried out with extraordinary ease. The
Prince de Condé was arrested and imprisoned in the Bastille. The other
princes fled, and Concini triumphed once more; but the people of Paris
showed their hatred by sacking his palace in the Rue de Tournon, full
of treasures worth 200,000 crowns.
On November 14, according to the registers of the parish of Braye,
“s’en est allée de vie à trépas noble dame Suzanne de la Porte, dame de
Richelieu.” The Bishop of Luçon writes to his brother Alphonse:
“MY DEAR BROTHER,--I regret much that you must learn by this letter
our common loss of our poor mother, although I know that for you it
will be the more bearable in that, having yourself renounced the world
to gain heaven, her life and her death give you certain assurance of
meeting her again there; since in the latter God gave her as much
grace, consolation, and sweetness as in the former she had suffered
contradiction, affliction and bitterness.... For myself, I pray God
that in future her good example and yours may so profit me that I may
amend my life.”
M. Avenel gives a letter from Henry de Richelieu, the head of the
family, to his sister Nicole (afterwards Madame de Maillé-Brézé),
begging her to lay their mother’s body, as honourably as possible, in
the chapel of the château, there to await himself and the Bishop, “that
we may all together bear her to the grave.”
It was not till December 8 that “noble dame Suzanne de la Porte” was
laid in the family vault under the church of Braye. But it appears
that her son Armand was waited for in vain. There was question of a
special embassy to Spain on the affairs of the Duke of Savoy; there was
the immediate prospect of becoming a Minister of France. Indeed, he was
already one of a triumvirate--Barbin, Mangot, Richelieu--on whom, under
Concini, depended all affairs of State. Between his mother’s death and
her funeral, he was writing letters vowing eternal gratitude both to
the Maréchal and to Leonora, through whose favour and consideration
alone, he declared, their Majesties had been pleased to appoint him
Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
CHAPTER VI
1617
A contemporary view of the state of France--Barbin, Mangot, and
Richelieu--A new rebellion--Richelieu as Foreign Secretary--The Abbé
de Marolles--Concini in danger--The death of Concini--The fall of the
Ministry--Horrible scenes in Paris--Richelieu follows the Queen-mother
into exile.
The Sieur de Pontchartrain, in his _Memoirs_, gives a vivid account of
the state of France in the winter of 1616-17. He was not exactly an
impartial judge, since he had himself been a Minister of State under
the Duc de Villeroy, and he saw things from his patron’s point of view.
But he was an honest man.
Like Sully, he entirely failed to realise the political genius of
the Bishop of Luçon, treating him and his colleagues as contemptible
creatures of Concini. He writes of “the bad management of affairs,
the small regard shown by the Queen-mother for the King, from whom
all affairs are concealed, the unjust detention of M. le Prince de
Condé and the alienation of all the other princes and great men, the
ambitious designs, hurtful to France, of the Maréchal d’Ancre and of
his wife, the banishment from affairs of all the old Ministers of
State, and the establishment of two or three who have neither merit nor
experience, except as ministering to the passions of the Maréchal and
his wife (these were M. Mangot, Barbin, and Richelieu-Luçon).... Thus
all things were embroiled; and in order to fortify herself against evil
designs, the Queen-mother, assisted by the counsel of the said Maréchal
d’Ancre and of the said _sieurs_ Barbin, Mangot, and Richelieu, Bishop
of Luçon, resolved to prepare openly for war.”
Pontchartrain concludes that the sole motive of this worthless and
tyrannical council was to maintain the Maréchal in absolute power:
also that under the confusion of war expenditure might be concealed
the “great gifts, pensions and appointments” which he took from the
national finances.
That the Queen-mother was wrong-headed and foolish, that Concini’s
haughty swagger and Leonora’s avarice and secret intrigues were hateful
and degrading elements in both Court and government, no one can deny.
But those who stand farther off than Pontchartrain may see what was
hidden from him, and probably from many worthy persons of his day--that
Barbin, Mangot and Richelieu were not unpatriotic in advising war
against the rebel princes and nobles, whose motives, after all, were no
purer than those of Concini.
As to themselves, Barbin was a man of clean hands, a rare attribute in
those days; clear-headed and wise. Mangot, if not brilliant, had the
merit of being loyal to his colleagues. Richelieu, in this first short
ministry, gave every sign of future greatness, and in a way which makes
not only Pontchartrain, but Sully, seem unnaturally blind. Henry’s old
Minister was one of those who spoke most slightingly of the man who,
more than any other, was to carry on Henry’s foreign policy.
He was amazingly eager and young. He sprang into office like a soldier
into the saddle, his whole mind and body devoted at once to the service
of his country. The administration of his poor little diocese had
taught him to command men. That those who worked with him felt his
superiority, not only in position but in talent, is shown by the fact
that he was at once given precedence over the other Ministers. The
Comte de Brienne resented this, observing in an unfriendly manner that
a Bishop should reside in his diocese. The Maréchal d’Ancre, on the
other hand, pressed Richelieu to resign his see. His motive was plain,
and had nothing to do with the welfare of the people of Luçon: being
thus deprived of his chief means of living, the young Minister would be
entirely dependent on his patron’s will. Richelieu was far too clever
to yield, and the advice of his friend Barbin strengthened his refusal.
“Considering the changes which might come about, either through the
changeable humours of that personage or by accidents to his fortune, I
would never consent, which made him unreasonably angry.”
He resigned his post of chaplain to the reigning Queen, in which he
was succeeded by the young Bishop of Langres, Sébastien Zamet, second
son of the great financier, and afterwards a conspicuous figure in the
history of Port-Royal.
The first duty of the new Ministers was to crush a new rebellion,
for the Ducs de Bouillon and de Nevers, demanding the release of
Condé and the fall of Concini, had set the east of France in a blaze.
Three armies had to be raised and sent to meet them. The commanders
were chosen--the Comte d’Auvergne, the Duc de Guise, the Maréchal de
Montigny; a harder matter was to find the men and the money. By means
of a new tax, Richelieu and Barbin were able to hire a few thousand
mercenaries from Flanders, Germany, Holland and Switzerland; the rest
were recruited in France by gentlemen who took a heavy commission on
their loyal work: indeed, as usual, the soldiers saw little of their
promised pay, and were driven, as usual, to extract a living from the
wretched people of the provinces. Champagne, the Île de France, the
Nivernais, suffered in this winter of 1616 as Berry, Touraine and
Poitou had done twelve months before.
One of the complaints of the malcontent princes against the government
was the state of the national finances; in truth, the half-dozen years
since Henry’s death had reduced France from relative prosperity to
something very like bankruptcy. But Richelieu retorted on the princes
by a published statement, meant to enlighten the country as to the
fate of some of its funds. The Prince de Condé had received 3,665,990
_livres_; the late Comte de Soissons, his wife and son (Charles de
Bourbon died in 1612, and his family were even more restless and
greedy than himself), 1,600,000 _livres_; the old Prince de Conti,
now also dead, and his worldly widow, 1,400,000 _livres_; the Duc
de Longueville, 1,200,000 _livres_; the Duc de Mayenne, 2,000,000
_livres_; the Duc de Vendôme, 600,000 _livres_; the Duc d’Épernon,
700,000 _livres_; the Duc de Bouillon, 1,000,000 _livres_; all, says
M. Martin, without counting “salaries, pensions, and gifts to their
friends and servants.” As a _livre_ was about the same as a franc,
and then worth five times as much as now, the smallest of these
“gratifications” was equal to £120,000, and the largest to nearly
£800,000 sterling. It must be added that the eight Marshals of France
and six other great officers of the Crown received four times as much
as in the days of Henry.
The royal armies were successful; they drove the princes before them,
destroying their strongholds, and besieged them in the fortified towns
to which they retreated. “They were in despair,” says Pontchartrain.
Henry de Richelieu, a keen and good soldier, served as aide-de-camp to
the Maréchal de Montigny.
It was at this time that Richelieu, as Secretary of State, gave the
Powers of Europe the first intimation that French policy was not for
ever to be bound up with the interests of Spain--a great change, after
nearly seven years of Marie de Médicis’ rule, and a striking forecast
of the future. England, Holland, and Germany were assured of the
friendship of France, on the understanding that no assistance was given
to the rebel princes. The Spanish marriages, Richelieu’s ambassadors
assured the Protestant Powers, did not bind Louis XIII. either to Rome
or to Spain “to the prejudice of our ancient allies.” The King would
give equal treatment to his subjects of either religion. “No Catholic
is so blind as to esteem a Spaniard, in matters of State, more highly
than a French Huguenot.”
Independence of Spain had already been practically shown by Richelieu
in not forbidding the Duc de Lesdiguières, governor of Dauphiné,
himself a distinguished Huguenot, to lead an army of his own across the
Alps in order to support Duke Charles Emmanuel of Savoy in his quarrel
with the Spanish Viceroy of Milan.
Thus Richelieu was already giving Europe a taste of his strength,
and advancing, fast and fearlessly, beyond the narrow lines of the
Bishop of Luçon’s courtly speech before the States-General. He was no
longer “the man of the clergy,” but “the man of France.” Naturally he
was losing the confidence of his empty-headed patron, who scolded the
Ministers like schoolboys and was violently jealous of Richelieu’s
growing influence with the Queen.
“By God, sir,” he wrote to him on some small matter of discontent, “I
complain of you: you treat me too ill; you treat for peace without me;
you make the Queen write to me that for the love of her I am to cease
my pursuit of M. de Montbazon for the money he owes me. In the name of
all the devils, what do you and the Queen expect me to do? Rage gnaws
me to the bones.”
A Ministry that depended on such a favourite was on a slippery slope
indeed. The difficulties, at home and abroad, were enormous, and the
wonder is that Richelieu and his colleagues, during their few months of
uncertain power, were able to do so much.
Just at this time, when he was fighting the princes and parleying
with Europe, the Abbé de Marolles gives a snapshot of him worth many
formal portraits. The Abbé was then a young scholar at the university.
His father, Claude de Marolles, a well-known soldier and courtier,
once commanding the Swiss Guard, had joined the rebel princes and was
attempting to negotiate between the Duc de Nevers and the commanders of
the royal army.
M. Mangot, the Keeper of the Seals, sent for young Michel de Marolles
and inquired of him whether he had received letters from his father or
had had news from any of his father’s people. He warned him to hide
nothing of the truth--“parce qu’il y alloit du service du roi.”
“There was M. de Luçon, in black, flung back (_renversé_) in a leathern
chair, while M. le Garde des Sceaux stood up while speaking to me....”
Presently, “M. de Luçon, who knew my father pretty well and esteemed
him, rose up in his chair and said that in truth he did not believe
that M. de Marolles had turned against the King’s service of his own
free will, but that he was sorry he should have found himself engaged
in so bad a cause. Then he added very low that I might retire, and
that he did not advise me to remain in Paris.”
Such a warning, in those days, was not to be despised, and the young
scholar was sent to his home in Touraine.
In spite of the political and military successes of the Ministers he
was supposed to rule, the storm which overwhelmed the unlucky Concini
was gathering all through that winter at the Louvre. Paris was careless
and gay: after letting out her rage by sacking his house, she was
content to enjoy the scurrilous songs and pamphlets, her favourite
food, which rang through the streets and were sold by hundreds on the
Pont Neuf.
“The year began joyously,” writes Bassompierre, a lighter-hearted
witness than Pontchartrain, and a loyal courtier of Marie de Médicis.
“Many fine assemblies, at which, besides gambling, feasting, and
comedy, there was also good music. Time passed pleasantly at the Fair
of Saint-Germain.”
The Maréchal and Leonora shared little in these amusements. He, at
least, was troubled with a heavy presentiment of misfortune to come,
and a present grief, the illness and death of their little daughter,
caused them both “un cruel déplaisir.” The friendly soul Bassompierre,
who had known him in his Florentine days, visited them in their sorrow
on the very day of the child’s death. He found them together, “fort
affligés,” in the little house close to the Louvre.
“I tried as well as I could to console or divert him, but the more I
spoke the more he grieved, and weeping answered me nothing, except
“_Seignor_, je suis perdu; _seignor_, je suis ruiné; _seignor_, je suis
misérable.”
Bassompierre begged him to consider that he was a Marshal of France,
and therefore that such lamentations, though worthy of his wife, were
unworthy of him; adding in the candid fashion of the time that although
he had lost an amiable daughter he had yet four nieces, by whose means
he might ally himself with any four great French houses that he might
choose--“and many other things which God inspired me to say.”
“Ah, monsieur,” replied Concini, “I truly mourn my daughter, and shall
mourn her as long as I live. Nevertheless, I am a man able to endure
with constancy a grief such as this; but the ruin of myself and my
wife, my son and my house, which I see before my eyes, and which my
wife’s obstinacy makes inevitable, causes me to lament and to lose
patience.”
He went on to tell Bassompierre the familiar story of his life, curious
enough from his own point of view. According to him, he had been
perfectly happy and prosperous till within the last few months--since,
in fact, to outward view, he had possessed almost sovereign power.
His excitable southern nature was not made to stand firm against the
assaults of fortune, party hatred, popular fury and insult; in all this
he saw warnings from heaven of coming ruin, terrible and complete. On
his knees, he said, he had implored his wife to retire with him to
Italy, where with their immense fortune they could establish themselves
magnificently and leave a fine heritage to their son. But the
Maréchale, with more courage, if also with a more greedy, unsatisfied
ambition, absolutely refused to leave France. It was cowardly and
ungrateful, she said, to think of forsaking the Queen, to whom they
owed their honours and their wealth. “If it were not for my obligations
to my wife,” he said, “I would leave her, and go where neither nobles
of France nor common people would follow and find me.”
Bassompierre went away reflecting how men uplifted by fortune are
often inspired to foresee a coming fall; but also how seldom they have
resolution enough to avoid it.
If Concini was sincere in his wish to leave his dangerous eminence,
this episode throws a tragic light on his conduct during the first
three months of 1617. His insolent bravado at Court and elsewhere
seems now the desperation of an adventurer fighting hopelessly for his
life. It was hardly necessary for M. de Luynes to poison the King’s
mind against the Maréchal d’Ancre; he did it himself. A day seldom
passed without some new insult, some fresh mark of disrespect shown to
Royalty. The Maréchal laughed at the boy, teased him, did not uncover
in his presence. Standing with one or two attendants at a window in the
Louvre, Louis looked down with proud and gloomy eyes on the Maréchal’s
splendid suite as it pranced in the courtyard without a salute to spare
for him. When the King wanted money--which frequently happened, for his
mother did not indulge him in that way or any other--the Maréchal asked
him, with an air of dashing liberality which deeply offended the boy,
why he had not applied to him.
Luynes was an ambitious man, of course; but any loyal servant of the
King would have done well to be angry, and Concini, by refusing him
one of his nieces in marriage, had made a personal enemy of him. While
Louis, sad and bored from childhood, went his melancholy way, catching
little birds, wheeling barrows of turf to make banks in the Tuileries
gardens, his handsome falconer was always there, whispering a deeper
discontent into ears by no means dull. The removal of Concini, his wife
and his parasites, would mean the Queen-mother’s fall from the height
of power she had usurped ever since the King was declared major, thus
ending her regency. It would mean the submission of the rebel princes
and nobles, who were even now declaring themselves, by secret letters
and messages, faithful servants of the King. It would seat Louis XIII.
on his father’s throne.
There was only one way. Louis was at first unwilling that the Maréchal
should be killed. He discussed other plans with Luynes and two or three
confidants. He might escape from Paris to Amboise, where a brother of
Luynes was in command and where his friends might gather round him; or
he might join the princes, taking the command of their forces, which
would thus become his own. These ideas reached the Queen-mother, and
his guards were changed for others whom she could trust. Escape was
made impossible, and from that time Concini was doomed.
Luynes and his fellows, with the King’s full consent, plotted the
affair with M. de Vitry, captain of the guard, a bold, resolute man. On
the morning of Monday, April 24, this officer with a few companions
met Concini at the entrance of the Louvre on his way to pay his daily
visit to the Queen.
“Sir,” said Vitry, “I arrest you, by order of the King.”
“À moi!” cried Concini, laying his hand on his sword; but before his
train of startled courtiers knew what was happening, three of Vitry’s
men had fired their pistols in his face; he fell dead, shot through the
brain.
Not a sword was drawn to avenge him; the words “By order of the King,”
had suddenly recovered their old magic power, and the whole palace
echoed with “Vive le Roi!”
On that fatal morning, the Bishop of Luçon was paying an early visit
to a distinguished doctor of the Sorbonne, one of the rectors of the
University. The news reached the two theologians by means of a third,
who brought it from the Palais de Justice. M. d’Ornano, one of the
conspirators, had been sent there direct from the Louvre to inform the
Parliament of what had happened: such a precaution was necessary, for
Paris was already in an uproar. Rumour cried in the streets that the
young King had been wounded, and by the hand of the Maréchal. The shops
were hastily shut and crowds were pouring towards the Louvre, to meet
the news that the King was well and the Maréchal dead. Then Paris burst
into acclamations of joy.
For the Bishop of Luçon the event was of the most serious consequence,
but he wasted neither time nor words in lamenting his patron.
“I was the more surprised,” he says, “as I had never foreseen that
those who were near the King would be strong enough to design such an
enterprise. I immediately quitted the company of that doctor, famous
both for his teaching and his virtue, who did not forget to say quite
_à propos_ what I might have expected from a man of his learning--as
to the inconstancy of fortune and the uncertainty of all that may seem
most settled in human life.”
On the Pont Neuf, as he drove home, the Bishop met his friend M. du
Tremblay, full of the news, who told him that the King was inquiring
for him. Before presenting himself at the Louvre, he sought out his
terrified colleagues, Mangot and Barbin, who feared the worst for
themselves and for him. It was agreed that they should go one by one,
the Bishop first, to receive His Majesty’s commands.
It was the first really alarming crisis in Richelieu’s life. There is
no doubt that so clever a man must have expected something of the kind,
must have known that the favourite’s tyranny could not last for ever.
It was only a few days indeed since he and Barbin, having discovered
that Concini meant to get rid of them and to replace them with more
submissive Ministers, had privately offered their resignation to the
Queen, who refused to receive it. Also, it seems, with a view to his
own safety, Richelieu had made some advances towards friendship with
M. de Luynes. But, for all that, the moment was dangerous. Both Court
and populace were likely to turn against those who had owed their power
to the dead Maréchal; various threats and warnings had already reached
the ears of Barbin. For Richelieu himself, as he mounted the grand
staircase of the Louvre, the signs were not exactly favourable. “I saw
many faces of those who had caressed me two hours before, and who now
did not recognise me.”
In the great gallery, crowded with courtiers and armed men, young Louis
XIII. was standing on a billiard table, to be seen by all. There is a
picturesque story that he cried out, on seeing the Bishop approach,
“Eh bien, Luçon! me voilà hors de votre tyrannie!” Whatever the boy
may have thought or said, M. de Luynes was not so impolitic as to make
a mortal enemy of the most brilliant man in the kingdom. Mangot might
be scornfully neglected, Barbin might be imprisoned--as they were--but
Luçon seemed worth winning, or at least keeping in the balance till the
King and his mother had arranged their differences.
According to Richelieu’s own account, the King spoke to him
kindly--“saying that he knew I had always loved him (he used those
words) and had taken his part on various occasions, in consideration
of which he would treat me well.” M. de Luynes joined in, with
protestations of friendship. But this was merely personal. When
Richelieu tried to plead for his colleagues, who deserved the royal
favour neither more nor less than himself, Luynes would not listen.
He also replied very coldly to the Bishop’s request to see the
Queen-mother, now strictly guarded in her own rooms.
He gave him to understand, however, that he was still of the royal
Council, and advised him to present himself in the Council-chamber.
Richelieu did so; but only to be treated as an intruder. The old
Ministers, Villeroy, Jeannin and the rest, were already in their
former places, and were deeply engaged in the business of reversing
Richelieu’s policy; while sending despatches to all the provinces, to
the armies, to the rebel princes and to foreign courts with the news
that the King of France had at length come to his own.
It was a curious position for the late Secretary of State. After
standing for a few minutes inside the door, speaking to one or two
councillors, he thought it best to retire quietly, and went home to his
house.
At the Louvre, shut up in her apartments, but still surrounded by her
ladies, the Queen-mother lamented with hard, tearless passion--not the
death of her favourite, which troubled her little, but the loss of her
own authority. Fear of the future and of her son’s vengeance filled her
mind, to the exclusion of every other human feeling. She had no pity
to spare even for the miserable Leonora, her lifelong friend, who was
seized by the guards immediately after her husband’s death, plundered
of all her treasures and imprisoned, first in the Louvre, then in
the Bastille, her son Henry Concini, a boy of thirteen, having been
torn from her. The little Comte de la Pena, as they called him, was a
pretty boy and a famous dancer. The Comte de Fiesque, the young Queen’s
equerry, took him under his protection and brought him to her. Anne
made him dance, fed him with sweetmeats, and kept him in her household
till his fatal name condemned him also to prison. Some time later, he
was set free and sent back to Italy.
The murderers of Concini robbed his dead body of money and jewellery
and left it lying under a staircase in the court of the Louvre,
near the gate through which crowds of Parisians of every rank, who
had trembled before the Maréchal, came crowding to pay their homage
to the King. During the day his house near the Louvre and his wife’s
apartments were completely sacked and pillaged, their flying servants
chased in all directions. In the evening his body was carried secretly
across the way to the Church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois and buried,
with no funeral rites, behind the organ.
But the fury and rage of the mob were far from being satisfied. The
Parisians of 1617 were the ancestors of those of 1793. “The next
morning,” says Pontchartrain, “the 25th of the said month of April,
day of Saint Mark, about ten o’clock, a few women and children, in the
Church of Saint-Germain of the Auxerrois, began to say one to another,
standing over the place where he had been interred: ‘See where they
have buried that tyrant: is it right that he, who did so much evil,
should lie in holy ground and in a church? No, no; out with him; throw
him on a dunghill!’ And exciting each other with such words, they began
with sticks to break up the stone under which the body lay; the women
using knives and scissors, until strong men began to lend a hand. In
less than half an hour two or three hundred persons were assembled;
they raise the stone, take out the body, tie cords round the neck, drag
it out of the church and thence through the streets, with horrible
shouts and yells, some saying it should be thrown into the river,
others that it should be burnt, others that it should be hanged on a
gibbet; each one worse than the last. Thus they found themselves at the
end of the Pont Neuf, where there were two or three gibbets set up.”
Gibbets had been planted here and there in the city by Concini’s
orders, “to frighten those who dared speak ill of him.” To cut the
horrible story short, they hanged his dead body on one of these and
then tore it to pieces with the savagery of wild beasts, burning part
and throwing part into the river.
Richelieu was an eye-witness of these horrors. He was on his way
to visit the Pope’s Nuncio, and his coach drove on to the bridge, a
favourite thoroughfare, to find it a mass of people absorbed in their
dreadful work and “so drunk with fury that there was no means of
getting them to make way for the passage of coaches.”
The Bishop’s coachman was indiscreet enough to take matters with the
usual high hand and to attempt to force his way. One of the men who was
roughly hustled made a loud complaint.
“At that instant,” Richelieu writes, “I saw my peril, in case any one
should cry out that I was a partisan of the Maréchal d’Ancre. To save
myself, after violently threatening my coachman, I asked them what
they were doing, and when they had answered me according to their fury
against the Maréchal, I said to them, ‘You are men who would die to
serve the King: shout, all of you, _Vive le Roi!_’ I led them off, and
thus I gained free passage, and I took good care not to return the same
way; I recrossed by the Pont Notre Dame.”
A few days later, after a painful interview with her son--at which her
stony calm broke down and she wept bitterly--and after formal farewells
from court and city, Marie de Médicis quitted Paris for an honourable
captivity at the Château de Blois. Her younger children took leave of
her at the gate of the city. She was accompanied by a train of faithful
servants, French and Italian, among whom the most distinguished was the
Bishop of Luçon; it was largely owing to his influence with Luynes that
the Queen had not been treated with greater severity.
Two months later, after an unfair and absurd trial, the Maréchale
d’Ancre was beheaded in the Place de Grève and her remains burnt
to ashes. Most of the money, property, and possessions which she
and her husband had accumulated during their years of power was
bestowed upon the King’s friend and favourite, now Duc de Luynes and
Lieutenant-General of Normandy. For his own not very considerable share
in the ruin and death of Concini and his wife, Louis XIII. was rewarded
by the French people with the title of “Le Juste.”
CHAPTER VII
1617-1619
Richelieu at Blois--He is ordered back to his diocese--He writes
a book in defence of the faith--Marriage of Mademoiselle de
Richelieu--The Bishop exiled to Avignon--Escape of the Queen-mother
from Blois--Richelieu is recalled to her service.
In this swift and sudden way Richelieu fell from power. The position
in which he now found himself was difficult enough. He was the
Queen-mother’s chief friend and confidant in the early days of her
exile at Blois, and the head of her council, but he was surrounded by
mischievous rivals, some Italian, some French, who played him false and
undermined his influence. The Queen’s household, following its royal
mistress’s lead, was all plot and intrigue, delusion and fury. Almost
the only wise person, besides Richelieu himself, was his old friend
Madame de Guercheville, Marie’s lady of honour. She, at least, saw good
cause for the Bishop of Luçon’s endeavour to keep the little captive
Court at Blois in favour with the Court of the Louvre by a constant
and civil correspondence with the almighty Luynes. She saw the force
of the Bishop’s reasoning--that the actual state of things must be
accepted--that the King was the King, and his subjects, including his
mother, might as well rebel against Heaven. Therefore Richelieu was
doing his best for Her Majesty--and incidentally for himself too--by
representing her and her servants as absolutely devoted to the service
of the King.
It is natural enough that Luynes, listening to Richelieu’s enemies, was
not inclined to trust him, either as to the Queen-mother’s peaceable
loyalty or his own. But he made no mistake as to the Bishop’s political
genius; and therefore, it seems, he decided to deprive the Queen-mother
of his services.
The intrigue is not very clear, even to this day. Richelieu had a
letter from his brother, the Marquis, warning him that the King was
displeased with him and that he would shortly be ordered to retire to
his diocese. Afterwards it appeared that the information, conveyed
by friends at Court to Henry de Richelieu, was false, or at least
premature. But the Bishop acted on it without delay. Knowing that Marie
would not willingly part with him, he asked for a fortnight’s leave of
absence and went to the Château de Richelieu. From thence he wrote to
the King and to Luynes, protesting his loyalty and complaining of the
calumnies of his enemies. The King sent a cold reply, advising him to
attend to the duties of his diocese and to remain within its bounds
till further orders.
Marie de Médicis was passionately angry, and wrote furious letters
to her son and the favourite. It was treating her not like a mother,
but like a slave, she said, thus to affront her by removing her most
capable servant. But her bitter complaints were of no avail.
Richelieu resigned himself in a more dignified fashion. Every
action of his life must be considered in view of the fact that
he was a politician of extraordinary cleverness, with clear eyes
fixed unchangeably on the future of power which he always meant to
attain. For five months, under most troublesome circumstances, he had
practically ruled France. He had built his castle eagerly, swiftly,
successfully; and then a far less clever man, by whispering into the
ready ear of a boy, had shaken it to the ground. It had been built,
of course, on the wrong foundation: the Bishop of Luçon had plenty of
time to reflect, as he sat among his books at Coussay, on the too late
realised truth that divinity hedged a king, that Louis XIII. was the
master.
It is doing Richelieu no injustice to suggest that if he had been
well received in the King’s Council-chamber on that tragic April 24,
he might never have followed the Queen-mother to Blois. His sincere
admirer, M. Avenel, says, “His first thoughts were given to the Court
and the Ministry; only his second to exile and the Queen: ambitious
by temperament, generous from necessity, the seeming heroism of his
fidelity in misfortune reduces itself to this.”
And that very semblance of heroic fidelity was probably based on the
calculation that Marie de Médicis, being the King’s mother and a person
not easily crushed or ignored, would be reconciled to her son before
many months had passed by. That Richelieu had any real feeling for her
beyond the banal devotion of a courtier seems exceedingly doubtful. He
was a hard creature, made of steel and flame, and Marie, a dozen years
older than himself, was not an attractive woman. The hasty retreat from
Blois was no personal grief to him.
In short, Richelieu now set himself to please--or rather, not to
displease--Louis XIII., on whose favour his fortunes so clearly
depended. His faith in the future never really deserted him, though for
seven years, like Jacob, he served and waited in the wilderness.
During that first summer, at his pleasant priory of Coussay, he wrote a
book.
The worthy Père Cotton, the Jesuit confessor of Henry IV. and Louis
XIII., had been dismissed by Luynes. His successor, the Père Arnoux,
a much less discreet personage, preached a violent sermon before the
King against the Protestants, accusing them of misunderstanding and
misinterpreting the Bible. Four ministers of Charenton, learned men,
published a spirited reply, which was suppressed by royal order, after
discussions in the Sorbonne and the Parliament. But the Huguenots
boasted loudly that the Catholics could not defend themselves, and it
appeared to the Bishop of Luçon that indeed the Church had supplied no
remedy to save souls from the evil effects of reading “that pernicious
book.”
“Therefore,” he says, “I employed the leisure of my solitude in
answering it; and owing to the length of time during which I had been
diverted from the exercise of my profession, I laboured with such
ardour that in six weeks I finished the work.”
This Defence of the Catholic Faith was a book of 250 pages, full
of theological learning, and written with moderation, tact, and
practical good sense. The Bishop here preached again those doctrines
of toleration, of conversion by reasoning, not by force, with which
he had met the Huguenots of his diocese ten years before. It was the
book of a statesman as much as of a theologian. He marshalled an
army of arguments to prove the ministers in the wrong; enjoined on
the schismatics loyalty and obedience to the laws; but for the King
he advised gentleness and patience; the object to be sought by all
being national unity and peace. The book was printed at Poitiers, and
published within three months of its beginning. It was greatly admired,
and added much to its author’s reputation; but also, as he notes rather
sadly, “it burdened me with envy.” His enemies saw that they had not
silenced the Bishop of Luçon by banishing him to his diocese.
There, during these months of enforced residence, he seems to have
worked with all the freshness and “ardour” consequent on absence and
change of thoughts. He writes in August to the Nuncio: “I am here in my
diocese, where I try to make known by all my actions that I have and
shall have no other passion than doing all I can for the glory of God.”
A word of personal complaint in his letters is rare. He was surrounded
by his friends, living in a pleasant and healthy little château where
the people loved him. Sébastien Bouthillier was now Dean of Luçon and
his constant companion. He had his books, collected in the days when
he, La Rocheposay, Saint-Cyran and the rest found their diversion in
study; and if all these things were not the passion of his life, yet
he loved them still. He might have been far more of a bookworm than
he really was, from the tone of his letters at this time. “I live at
a little hermitage among books” ... “I am living quietly here in the
enjoyment of my books” ... “Serving God and my friends, I am resolved
to spend the time quietly among my books and my neighbours;” and much
more of the same kind. Now and then, it is true, when news from the
great outside world comes to him, sitting helpless in his hermitage, he
is seized with restless impatience and confesses himself _malheureux_.
But this is only in letters to his own family and to his friend Père
Joseph: the face turned to the King and to all public personages is
dignified, grave and serene.
Richelieu watched, from distance and obscurity, the still rising
fortunes of the Duc de Luynes. The lucky Provençal, of doubtful
nobility, was able to choose a wife among the noblest, richest and
most beautiful women in France. He refused Mademoiselle de Vendôme,
Henry IV.’s daughter--who afterwards married the Duc d’Elbeuf--probably
from fear and dislike of her odious brother. He would have nothing to
say to Mademoiselle d’Ailly and her enormous fortune, but arranged a
marriage for her with his younger brother Cadenet, a dashing soldier,
who took the title of Duc de Chaulnes from one of her estates. His own
choice fell on Marie de Rohan, daughter of the Duc de Montbazon, then a
lovely wild girl of seventeen. After his death she married the Duc de
Chevreuse, a younger brother of the Duc de Guise, and was for years the
most admired beauty and most mischievous woman in Europe.
Another piece of news was the removal of the Prince de Condé, “ce petit
brouillon,” whom Luynes had not dared to set free, from the Bastille to
the Château de Vincennes. His wife, Charlotte de Montmorency, was now
allowed to share his imprisonment, and the consequence was the birth
of Princess Anne-Geneviève de Bourbon, afterwards the famous Madame de
Longueville. Louis de Bourbon, the great Condé, was not born till after
his father’s release.
Later in the year, the Duc de Villeroy died at seventy-four. He was one
of the best of those old Ministers of State whom Henry IV. left to his
widow, the Regent. The Pope’s Nuncio, Bentivoglio, had a high opinion
of him. “Great was his experience, great his integrity; ... a good
Frenchman and a good Catholic,” says the Italian diplomat. Richelieu
describes him as a sincere man of good judgment, but narrow-minded and
jealous, and adds that he died after fifty-one years’ service with
clean hands, possessing little more than he had inherited from his
fore-fathers. It was a fine testimonial to Villeroy from the young
rival who, if only for a few months, had thrown him into the shade.
Richelieu was less generous with regard to Jacques-Auguste de Thou, the
“faithful and austere,” “light of France” and “prince of historians,”
as Camden called him, who died in that same year. Richelieu observes
of him that his piety was not equal to his learning, that knowledge
and action are different things, and that the speculative science of
government needs certain qualities of mind not always found to match
it. The inwardness of this criticism lies in the fact that de Thou, in
his Latin History of the sixteenth century, made certain scornful and
severe remarks on Richelieu’s ancestors and the part they took in the
Wars of Religion. Richelieu, exceedingly sensitive as to the honour
of his family, never forgave this, and when in 1642 François-Auguste
de Thou lost his head in the Cinq-Mars catastrophe, it was currently
believed that the Cardinal might have spared him but for those
paragraphs in his father’s history.
In November 1617 Nicole du Plessis-Richelieu, the Bishop’s younger
sister, was married quietly in Paris to a distinguished but eccentric
Angevin noble, the Marquis de Maillé-Brézé. Nicole was now a woman
of thirty. She had lived at Richelieu until her mother’s death; her
portion cannot have been large; of her brothers, one was a more or less
struggling courtier, one a monk, one a politician out of office. She
possessed little beyond a singular beauty and charm; the Marquis de
Brézé, who married her for love, cannot have foreknown the brilliant
thing he was doing. Brother-in-law to the most powerful man in Europe,
father-in-law of the great Condé, Marshal of France, governor of Anjou,
Viceroy of Catalonia, the Marquis had everything; and, “extravagant”
as he was, cared most of all for a good dog and a new book. But the
marriage turned out unhappily. Nicole de Richelieu went out of her
mind--one of her mad fancies being that she was made of glass--and died
shut up in the castle of Saumur. M. de Brézé was a bad husband, though
a clever and accomplished man. According to the stories of the time, it
was his unkindness and brutal infidelity that upset poor Nicole’s weak
brain.
The Bishop, of course, was not present at his sister’s marriage; but he
appears to have made all the necessary arrangements with M. de Brézé,
leaving the actual ceremony to be managed by Henry de Richelieu and his
young wife.
The Duc de Luynes was nervous on his lonely pinnacle of power. The
presence of the Queen-mother at Blois was a constant anxiety to him;
she was not only, in his eyes, an enemy to the State, but his own
personal and unforgiving enemy. And more than the Queen-mother he
feared her friends; certain of the great nobles, who were already
beginning to resent his exaltation, and those former ministers who had
been the real strength of her rule. Barbin was still in the Bastille.
With an appearance of leniency, Luynes made his imprisonment easier and
winked at a correspondence between him and the Queen. Copies of every
letter came into the hands of Luynes. Marie’s messengers boasted of
their mistress’s new freedom and speedy return to the Court.
These intrigues, dangerous from Luynes’ point of view, came to a sudden
end. Barbin, strictly imprisoned, nearly lost his head; many arrests
were made; two or three poor creatures who had written pamphlets on
the Queen’s side were cruelly put to death; Marie’s own imprisonment
was made much more rigorous, royal guards and royal spies with new and
strict orders being set to watch the Château de Blois.
Thus setting himself to terrorise the Queen-mother and her friends,
Luynes did not forget the Bishop of Luçon. On Wednesday in Holy
Week, 1618, Richelieu received a letter from the King full of vague
accusations of “goings and comings and secret proceedings which
caused umbrage and suspicion, affecting the King’s service and the
tranquillity of his subjects,” ordering him to retire immediately to
Avignon, there to remain till further commands.
“I was not surprised at receiving this despatch,” he says in his
_Memoirs_, “having always expected unjust, barbarous and unreasonable
treatment from the cowards who governed us.... But as I was accused of
acting against His Majesty’s service, I humbly begged him to send some
dispassionate person to examine the facts on the spot, being sure that
by such means His Majesty would be convinced of my innocence.”
It does not appear indeed that Richelieu had been much concerned, if at
all, in the recent intrigues between Blois and Paris. But Luynes was
afraid of him; and he was forced to depart instantly for that exile
which was the saddest experience of his younger life--proving once more
the old truth that the night is darkest before the dawn.
He left Luçon on Good Friday, for the royal commands admitted of no
delay, and started on the long, difficult, cross-country journey from
Poitou to the Venaissin. In wind-swept Avignon, still a half-Italian
city belonging to the Pope, he hired a house and settled himself to
endure the cruel idleness of banishment. He was not alone. His brother
and brother-in-law, M. de Richelieu and M. du Pont-de-Courlay, shared
his exile, for they too were old adherents of the Queen-mother, and
Luynes feared them all. He shut up his captive birds in the same
cage--“a great consolation to us,” says the Bishop, “though it was not
done for that end, but in order to keep us in sight together.”
Once more he flung himself into hard study. He wrote or dictated a
large collection of fragmentary notes, which took the form of a kind
of apology or explanation of his political views and doings. He wrote
a religious book, _L’Instruction du Chrétien_, planned long before.
He seems to have led a solitary and studious life, seeing few people,
writing few letters except to his diocese, meditating much and
suffering much, for he was ill in body as in mind.
And in the autumn the gloom of exile was deepened by severe family
sorrows. The young Marquise de Richelieu, Marguerite Guiot des
Charmeaux, whom her husband had been obliged to leave behind, died at
Richelieu after the birth of her first child. The little boy, François
Louis, only lived a few weeks, and was then laid in the vault at Braye
with his mother and his ancestors. It was not long before Henry de
Richelieu himself joined that company.
He was terribly grieved and desolate. Every glimpse that we have of his
wife shows her good and charming, and the blows of fortune may well
have seemed to both brothers too heavy to bear. The child’s death meant
the extinction of the direct male line of du Plessis-Richelieu.
After some weeks, by the intervention of their old friend Bassompierre,
the Marquis and his brother-in-law M. du Pont-de-Courlay were allowed
to go to Richelieu and to Paris on their family business. The Bishop
remained alone at Avignon.
His solitude there was of his own choice, for the Vice-Legate and
other dignitaries were ready to make much of him, and a letter to
his brother, written in February 1619, shows him very sensible of
some special kindness. He commissions M. de Richelieu to buy and
to send him the most beautiful hackney he can find--“mais belle
tout-à-fait”--probably such a gentle, ambling creature as a Vice-Legate
would ride--as well as pieces of choice goldsmith’s work to hang
on watches. His anxiety is that the presents should be “something
conformable to his condition,” for it is better to give nothing at all
than “un maigre présent.” The Bishop of Luçon, in poverty and exile,
had already the splendid tastes of the Éminentissime.
But in actual fact he was very solitary and intensely sad. For once in
his life he seems to have lost faith in his star, and as the conviction
that he would die in exile gained strength, he thought a good deal of
the poor little diocese he might never see again. He wrote a curious
document, a kind of last will, dated February 8, and addressed to
the Chapter of Luçon. After some expressions of sincere affection, he
leaves his body to the Cathedral, “that I may repose when dead in the
same place where, living, I desire to be....”
“... The place of my sepulture shall be, if you please, immediately
above the singers’ desk, leaving the higher part of the choir, as more
honourable, for those who shall come after me....
“I leave you also all the silver plate of my chapel, my ornaments, and
hangings of Flemish tapestry, to adorn the choir, without any condition
whatever, trusting to be helped by your prayers....
“If I could leave you anything more, I would very willingly do so; my
will surpassing my power, my wishes for you must supply the defect.
“The first benefit I wish you is to live in clear consciousness of your
condition, keeping before your eyes that this world is but illusion,
and that there is no profit or contentment except in the service of
God, who never forsakes them who serve Him.
“I desire for you a bishop who, equalling me in affection, may surpass
me in all other qualities.... I conjure him, whoever he may be, to
reside with you, to visit his diocese, to encourage in their duty, by
his example and his teaching, those who have the care of souls under
him, to maintain and augment the seminary founded at Luçon, to which I
leave a thousand _livres_ and my whole library....”
To this seminary for priests, a favourite foundation of his, Richelieu
had already given the revenues of an abbey in Poitou. He ends his
testament by beseeching the Chapter to live in the closest union with
his successor.
“After this, Sirs, it only remains to conjure you to love my memory as
that of a person who tenderly loves you and passionately desires your
salvation.”
Richelieu’s final farewell to the Luçon Chapter was written four years
later, in less affectionate and more businesslike terms. He was about
to be plunged in the political whirlpool which swallowed the rest
of his life, when he resigned the see in favour of M. de Bragelogne,
receiving in exchange the Abbey of Notre Dame du Wast in the diocese of
Le Mans, a canonry and prebend at St. Martin of Tours, and a retiring
pension of 6,000 _livres_.
The town of Blois was asleep in the dark small hours of February 23,
when Queen Marie de Médicis got out of her window in the Château,
climbed or slid down a hundred and twenty feet of ladders--a really
wonderful feat in a woman of her size and indolence--hurried through
the silent streets to the bridge over the Loire, got into a coach with
two or three attendants and some boxes of money and jewels, and drove
off, first to Loches, then to Angoulême. When Blois, castle and town,
awoke in the morning, the captive royal bird had flown.
The affair had been arranged, with extraordinary cleverness and
secrecy, by the Abbé Rucellai, one of those Italians in Marie’s
household whose intrigues had brought about the disgrace of Richelieu.
The active agent was the old Duc d’Épernon.
He had been a courtier of Henry III. and Henry IV., and had not yet
taken up arms in actual rebellion. It was he who stood by Marie de
Médicis after the death of Henry, and faced the Parliament with a
fierce declaration of her right to the Regency. She had not been
grateful: the Maréchal d’Ancre took the place in her court which
d’Épernon considered his due. Too proud for a lower position, he
retired to his estates and governments, which were many, including the
town of Metz, Saintonge, and the Angoumois. The rule of Luynes was
quite as offensive to him as that of Concini had been, and the plot for
the Queen’s escape was welcomed by one of the boldest, most romantic
and adventurous characters of the century.
When the time drew near, the Duke was at Metz. It was necessary to
gain the Angoumois by a secret dash across France, beset with so many
dangers that the chroniclers called that ride “le voyage d’Amadis.” His
province successfully reached, the Duke sent two active young men to
Blois to manage the actual escape, and himself waited for the Queen at
Loches, then conveying her to a place of greater safety. She was now
free to make terms with her son or to set France on fire against him.
The Duc de Luynes heard of Her Majesty’s “sortie” with amazement and
alarm. He had long watched her uneasily; and his brother afterwards
told Richelieu that he had resolved to take the King to Blois on the
pretext of a friendly visit, but really to convey the Queen-mother
“politely” to Amboise, his own stronghold, where “she would remain for
the future under good and sure guard.” He knew well that her quarrel
with him grew more bitter with every month of her captivity. During
that very winter he had married her second daughter, Madame Christine,
to the Prince of Piedmont, the Duke of Savoy’s son, with scarcely the
formal courtesy of asking her consent. Such an insult Marie was not
likely to forget.
Once at liberty, she might become the rallying centre for all the
discontented in the kingdom, and Luynes knew that they were many. He
had offended the nobles by withdrawing various pensions, and had set
the great Protestant party against him by royal decrees, especially
one which aimed at restoring Catholic worship in the little kingdom of
Béarn.
For a few days civil war seemed imminent. The King and Luynes, both
furiously angry, began to raise troops, and talked of riding off to the
west. But Luynes was not Concini. He was prudent _au fond_, some say
timid, and no soldier. He began to ask advice from wiser men in Paris
and elsewhere, even from the Duc de Bouillon, head of the Protestants,
and they all with one voice counselled peace. Besides, the nobles
showed no great eagerness to rebel suddenly against the King by joining
the Queen-mother and d’Épernon, while Marie’s letters to her son gave
a kind of basis for negotiations. It was resolved to throw the actual
blame of the affair on d’Épernon, and a royal edict at once deprived
him of all his appointments and governments, while ambassadors,
carefully chosen to please the Queen, were sent to her at Angoulême.
It seemed possible that such persuasive tongues as those of her old
favourite the Père de Bérulle and of the Comte de Béthune, Sully’s more
courtly brother and a devoted servant of Henry IV., might induce her to
accept the terms offered by her son to renounce the company of rebels
against his authority, and to choose a peaceable residence in some
other part of the kingdom.
There were those in Paris at the moment who did not wait for the
failure of these negotiations to suggest an even wiser plan. One man
in France could manage the Queen-mother: he was in exile at Avignon.
Restore him to her council; give him authority to mediate between her
and the King; his cleverness and moderation would soon bring her to
a less violent frame of mind, and so arrange matters to the King’s
satisfaction.
The originators of this idea were Richelieu’s two faithful friends, the
Dean of Luçon and Père Joseph.
The wonderful friar had been much away from France during Richelieu’s
exile. He had been to Rome and to Spain, travelling mostly on foot,
as the rule of his Order required. He had been working hard on the
details of a new crusade against the Turks, with the object not only of
rescuing the Holy Places, but of driving Islam out of Europe. It was
the favourite dream of Joseph’s life. He worked at its realisation in
concert with the Duc de Nevers, Charles de Gonzague, who was descended,
through his mother, from the Christian emperors of the East. These two,
with the Pope’s sanction, founded a crusading order of chivalry, “La
Milice Chrétienne,” and before the Thirty Years War broke out their
scheme had become popular throughout Catholic Europe. But it was an
anachronism, a mediæval romance, and as such it soon died away. The
two camps of Christendom had each other to fight. The revolt of the
Bohemian Protestants sealed the fate of Constantinople and Palestine.
Père Joseph’s crusading ardour was equalled by his devotion to
Richelieu. He and Bouthillier worked so well on the minds of Luynes
and of the King that it was decided to recall the Bishop from his
exile and to send him to join the Queen-mother at Angoulême, with
the understanding that while faithfully serving Her Majesty he would
counsel nothing against the King’s interest and the nation’s welfare.
The letter of recall was written by Louis XIII.’s own hand, and was
conveyed to Avignon by M. du Tremblay, Père Joseph’s brother. Riding
post-haste, he arrived there on March 7, 1619.
Here Richelieu may tell his own story.
“As soon as I had received His Majesty’s despatch, though the weather
was extraordinarily bad, the snow deep and the cold extreme, I posted
away from Avignon to obey my orders, led both by inclination and duty.
But my haste was soon interrupted, for in a little wood near Vienne I
fell in with a troop of thirty men of the Sieur d’Alincourt’s guards,
commanded by his captain of the guard, who met me with arms lowered,
saying that they had orders to arrest me. I begged the captain to show
me his powers, but he was provided with none. He replied to me that he
was executing the orders of the Sieur d’Alincourt, who had his orders
from the King....”
The Bishop’s impatient rage may be imagined. He was also greatly
alarmed, for it was only too possible that the King might have changed
his mind. Resistance was out of the question. M. du Tremblay rode off
to Lyons, where M. d’Alincourt was governor--he was the son of the Duc
de Villeroy, and had befriended Richelieu in his young days--in order
to find out which of the royal commands was the latest in date. The
Bishop and his servants were conveyed by the soldiers to Vienne, the
stupid captain treating his prisoner “like a criminal.” A sleepless
night at the inn was made more hideous by bands of men fighting in the
streets; a sham rescue, it seems, was devised by the captain for the
greater credit of himself and his men. No wonder that the Bishop was
exceedingly angry. “I thought you were ignorant,” said he, “but I now
see you are malicious.”
In the meanwhile, M. du Tremblay had laid the King’s letter before the
governor of Lyons, who perceived that he had made a mistake. It had
arisen from a morsel of gossip sent him by his son, who was at court
when the news of the Queen’s escape arrived, and to whom the Duc de
Luynes had hurriedly said--“If your father could arrest the Bishop of
Luçon, he would do us a great pleasure.” Luynes probably forgot the
words, spoken before the idea of making use of the Bishop as a mediator
had even been suggested; but M. d’Alincourt made haste to act upon
them, sending spies to Avignon and cleverly arranging the enterprise,
“which was not a very difficult one,” observes Richelieu, “there being
question only of stopping a man travelling alone.”
The governor did his best to “change his rigour into civility.” He sent
his coach to meet the Bishop on his way to Lyons, with a letter to
his captain, who was much astonished and ashamed. Richelieu showed no
resentment. He easily forgave the captain, dined with M. d’Alincourt at
Lyons, and then pursued his journey. Its risks were not over, for the
snow lay deep in the high wild country between Lyons and Limoges, and
the King’s troops, who were abroad in those parts, pursued the Bishop
for some distance, supposing him to be the Duc d’Épernon’s son, the
Archbishop of Toulouse.
Richelieu arrived at Angoulême on March 27, after a journey of more
than three weeks. It was again Wednesday in Holy Week. According to his
own account he was not made welcome, except by Madame de Guercheville.
The Duc d’Épernon and his party looked on him with doubt and suspicion
as an emissary of the King. Marie de Médicis, surrounded by them,
hardly dared to show her feelings of relief and joy.
CHAPTER VIII
1619-1622
The Treaty of Angoulême--The death of Henry de Richelieu--The meeting
at Couzières--The Queen-mother at Angers--Richelieu’s influence
for peace--The Battle of the Ponts-de-Cé--Intrigues of the Duc de
Luynes--Marriage of Richelieu’s niece--The campaigns in Béarn and
Languedoc--The death of Luynes--The Bishop of Luçon becomes a Cardinal.
Neither the Duc d’Épernon’s haughty reserve nor the Abbé Rucellai’s
malignant dislike and envy could long affect Richelieu’s place among
the Queen-mother’s counsellors. The Treaty of Angoulême was his work,
in concert with the King’s ambassadors, Bérulle, Béthune, the Cardinal
de la Rochefoucauld, and last, not least, Père Joseph. On both sides
the past was to be forgotten; Marie was to live where she chose and
to dispose freely of her revenues; all her partisans were restored to
the places and honours of which royal edicts had deprived them. On the
other hand, she gave up the government of Normandy for the smaller
one of Anjou, with 600,000 crowns in money, and the Duc d’Épernon was
obliged to renounce Boulogne, for which he received an indemnity of
50,000 crowns. It was thought that the Queen and her party had the
best of the bargain, and every one, even the Duc d’Épernon, gave the
Bishop of Luçon credit for the compromise. He had still bitter enemies
among the Queen’s _entourage_, but he had also firm friends, and the
best of these was his brother Henry, distinguished alike as soldier
and courtier, on whom the Queen immediately bestowed the military
government of her chief town and castle of Angers. She thus gravely
displeased her more greedy and restless servants, men who preferred
active rebellion with its chances to peace and loyalty. The Abbé
Rucellai was leader among them, and the Marquis de Thémines, captain
of the Queen’s guard, was one of the most ambitious. Various insulting
remarks made by him came to the ears of the Marquis de Richelieu; the
consequence was a duel, in which Henry de Richelieu fell, stabbed to
the heart.
“Death took him,” writes his brother, “but not so suddenly but that the
Sieur de Bérulle, who chanced to be passing by, had time to give him
absolution.”
It was the sharpest grief that ever touched Richelieu. The two had been
much drawn together of late years, and they seemed at this very time to
be starting together on a fresh and brilliant career.
The Marquis de Thémines disappeared in disgrace from the Queen’s
circle, but others of his party were ready to snatch at the government
of Angers and the command of the guards. They were disappointed. Marie
de Médicis replaced the dead Richelieu by his uncle, Amador de la
Porte, Commander of the Order of Malta, the worthy and gallant man to
whom young Armand de Richelieu owed his early education as collegian
and cadet. The captaincy of the guard was given to the Marquis de
Brézé, whose son Armand, afterwards Duc de Fronsac, was born about this
time.
Rucellai and his partisans, seeing themselves out-generalled, vanished
one by one and left a clear field to the Bishop of Luçon, whose
commanding influence grew every day stronger with the Queen.
A meeting and formal reconciliation between herself and her son became
now the question of the moment. In preparation either for this or for
the chance of civil war the Court had already moved from Paris, with
a strong escort of troops, to the Loire. The first stopping-place
was Amboise, where the King received news that the treaty had been
concluded. At Angoulême bonfires blazed and a _Te Deum_ was sung; at
Tours, where the Court proceeded to establish itself for the summer,
things were taken more quietly, perhaps more cynically, for the royal
interview was put off from month to month, and Luynes found that he
had a formidable person to deal with in the Queen’s chief counsellor.
Though the treaty might be signed, there were further arrangements to
be made before Richelieu would allow his royal mistress to meet her son.
In the meanwhile there was going and coming between Tours and
Angoulême, where the Prince of Piedmont and his young wife, with his
brother, Prince Thomas of Savoy, visited the Queen-mother and were
magnificently received by her loyal friend the Duc d’Épernon.
The long hot summer dragged slowly on. The young King and Queen,
Monsieur (Gaston, Duc d’Orléans, a boy of eleven), the little Princess
Henriette, the Duc de Luynes and the whole Court, passed the time as
best they could among the woods and rivers of Touraine and Anjou. They
visited La Flèche, where the heart of Henry IV. lay in the chapel
of the Jesuit College founded by him--and where its ashes are still
preserved, the embalmed heart itself having been burnt by patriots in
the Revolution. They made a progress among stately sun-baked châteaux,
lingering at Le Lude, the owner of which, formerly the patron of
Luynes and his brothers, now held the important post of governor to
Monsieur. Some of the courtiers, such as Bassompierre, found reasons
for riding backwards and forwards, post-haste, between Tours and Paris.
The Ministers there needed watching, being apt to sell rich military
appointments on their own authority.
At length Richelieu could delay no longer. He had gained for the
Queen-mother some additional advantages beyond the April treaty, and
he had extracted from Luynes a kind of vague promise, or at least
an understanding, that he should be recommended to the Pope for a
Cardinal’s Hat. At present this was his chief object and desire.
At the end of August Marie de Médicis left Angoulême to rejoin her
son. She was accompanied to the frontier of the Angoumois by the Duc
d’Épernon, from whom she parted with tears, and she was escorted on her
journey by Hercule de Rohan, Duc de Montbazon, father-in-law of Luynes,
whose château of Couzières, near Tours, had been chosen for the royal
meeting. It was not large or important, being rather a country-house
than a castle; but its woods and gardens were beautiful, and never, in
a history not lacking in romance, was Couzières the scene of so much
splendour.
The Queen-mother arrived there in the evening, with her train of ladies
and gentlemen, among whom were the Archbishop of Toulouse and the
Bishop of Luçon. The King left Tours the next morning on horseback,
attended by five hundred princes, lords and gentlemen.
“He arrived at the said Couzières before the Queen-mother had ordered
her dinner; he entered by the park gate, and the Queen at once came
forth to receive him. She met him in the garden, and there they saluted
and embraced each other with a great appearance of contentment on both
sides; the Queen-mother wept for joy.”
According to tradition, they found little to say to each other. “My
son has grown taller since I saw him,” said Marie. “For your service,
Madame,” said Louis.
They walked together, surrounded by crowds, to the house, and then,
while the Queen dined, Louis strolled in the garden. Later on, another
splendid cavalcade arrived from Tours--that of the reigning Queen, who
“made her compliments with many demonstrations of joy” and accompanied
the Queen-mother in her coach to Tours, the King flying his hawks in
the open country by the way.
Marie’s visit to the Court at Tours was not a success. The precedence
taken by Anne of Austria offended her. And Luynes was playing a
double game. He wanted the reconciliation, which would rid him of an
independent adversary; he wanted to work a separation between Marie and
the nobles of her party, especially the powerful Duc d’Épernon; but
he watched with a jealous eye any appearance of a real understanding
between her and the King. As to her friends and servants, he gave
them fair words and played them false at every turn. His conduct,
dishonest or diplomatic, may be judged by the fact that while the King
was writing to the Pope to request that the Archbishop of Toulouse and
the Bishop of Luçon should be promoted to be cardinals, Luynes was
giving the Court of Rome to understand, by a secret despatch, that only
the first name mentioned by the King need be taken in earnest. These
“sourdes et déloyales pratiques,” as M. Avenel calls them, continued
for many months, and Richelieu had few powerful advocates. Cardinal du
Perron was dead; and Cardinal Bentivoglio, the Nuncio, remarked coldly
on the extravagance of the Queen-mother’s demand and “la sfrenata
ambizione di Lusson.”
The Court left Tours on its return to Paris towards the end of
September. The King wished his mother to accompany him, but she
refused, choosing first to take formal possession of her government
of Anjou. Travelling by way of Chinon, and lingering a few days at
the stately castle on the Vienne, which had been made over to her
by treaty, and was commanded by the Seigneur de Chanteloube, one of
her most violent partisans, she received news which deepened her
displeasure and suspicion with regard to the Duc de Luynes. Her younger
son’s governor, the Comte du Lude, had died of fever at Tours, and
now, without a word to her, Colonel d’Ornano, a creature of Luynes and
a quite unfit man for the charge, was appointed in his stead. Another
piece of news, sprung upon the Queen-mother without consultation or
formal announcement, was that of the release of the Prince of Condé,
her own and Richelieu’s enemy, from Vincennes, and his reception by the
King, with a royal declaration blaming those who had brought about his
captivity. This may have been aimed at the Maréchal d’Ancre, but it
struck the Queen. Marie understood that the first prince of the blood
was now to be played off against herself in Luynes’ game.
She was magnificently received at Angers. The citizens of that noble
old town were as warlike, independent and keenly political now as in
the days of King John, and quite as unwilling to “open wide their
gates” to any unpopular sovereign. They had been amusing themselves
during that summer by rioting against their excellent bishop, Fouquet
de la Varenne, on some matter of ecclesiastical discipline. Commander
de la Porte, with all his courage and loyalty, was not quite the man
to manage “this peevish town.” He was a good-tempered chatterbox.
Before the Queen’s entrance into the city, Richelieu wrote a long
letter to “my dear Uncle,” in which, after a number of practical
details as to arms and provisions, he recommended gravity and dignity
in dealing with the _bourgeoisie_.
All went well on October 16, when Marie took formal possession of
her city of Angers. Thousands of people received her with immense
rejoicings. There was a grand military display, martial music and
ringing of bells, as the Queen approached, having crossed the long
arches and causeways of the Ponts-de-Cé. She did not lodge in the
gloomy old castle, where Henry II. of England once held his court, but
in the most beautiful house in the town, the Logis Barrault, now known
to travellers as the Museum of Angers. There a Court soon gathered
round her, increasing in numbers from day to day.
This state of things continued through the winter and the spring. Over
and over again the King invited his mother to Paris; but she and her
intimate counsellors found little satisfaction in the assurances sent
by Luynes of the royal good-will. The promises went hand in hand with
too many slights and affronts; and though Richelieu, according to his
own account, believed the Queen-mother’s right place to be at her son’s
Court, and though he felt that his own future lay there, he hesitated
to press his opinion against that of the majority of her friends. He
could not fail to see, as they did, that “there was much to be feared
in the power of the favourites.”
Luynes and his brothers were the first men in France. As to personal
character, though spoilt by success, these three Provençal adventurers
were good fellows enough; but as to greediness and ambition, Concini
himself had not gone further. In order to be independent of the King’s
favour, Luynes had contrived to get most of the strong frontier towns
of France into his hands. His brothers, one of them a Marshal of
France, married two of the richest heiresses in the kingdom and took
their place among the highest nobility.
“You would say,” writes Richelieu in his _Memoirs_, “that France exists
for them alone; that for them she abounds in all kinds of riches....
The governments and places that they hold seem in small proportion to
those they consider their due; ... what is not to be had for money
they take by violence; ... for their private bargains they make use of
the money raised from the people for the public good. In a word, if
the whole of France were to be sold, _ils achèteroient la France de la
France même_.”
Add to all this the insolent, boasting speeches which came to the
Queen-mother’s ears, the complaints of the King’s own Ministers and
of the Parliament of Paris, who liked the new favourites no better
than the old, and the anger of the nobles who found their pensions
unpaid and the best appointments snatched from their teeth;--it was not
amazing either that Marie hesitated as to leaving her town and Court
in the west to place herself, personally, in the power of Messieurs de
Luynes, or that Richelieu was slow in advising her to do so.
In May and June 1620 the governors of provinces were openly showing
their discontent. The Duc de Vendôme could dispose of Brittany, the
Duc de Longueville of Normandy, the Duc de Mayenne of Guyenne; and
these three, with many others, left the Court and retired to their
governments, where they began to prepare for civil war. The Duc de
Rohan, in the name of the Protestant party, went so far as to advise
the Queen-mother to leave Angers for Bordeaux and to assemble an army
in the South. One of the chief malcontents, the Comtesse de Soissons,
furious at the release of her cousin and enemy, the Prince de Condé,
left Paris with her young son and came to Angers. As the summer
advanced, the Queen having decided to hold her own in the west, many
of _les grands_ followed Madame la Comtesse, and Marie was surrounded
by a crowd of restless, warlike nobles and princes, who were held back
with difficulty from declaring open and instant war upon the King. Half
France, apparently, was on her side--princes, populations, Catholics,
Huguenots, and men of law: at one moment a successful campaign against
the King and Luynes seemed a certainty, and Angers was the centre of
enthusiastic military preparations.
But Richelieu was there--a power behind all the discontented swaggerers
of Her Majesty’s Court. A small, strong party, including the Queen
herself, believed in him. He had taken care that his friends should
hold the places nearest to her: Claude Bouthillier, brother of his
faithful Sébastien, was at this time her secretary. The clergy, who
always influenced Marie de Médicis, were with him to a man.
He did not intend that the misunderstandings between the Queen-mother
and the King, hardly mended by the passing reconciliation at Couzières,
should come to actual war. It was he who prevented the move to
the South; he who, through all these months at Angers, carried on
negotiations with Luynes. Now, as always, he resented the domination
of the princes and nobles, remaining convinced that the King must,
in the last resort, be the chief authority in the kingdom. He deeply
distrusted Luynes, and not altogether for personal reasons of
disappointed ambition. In a sense he stood between the two parties;
he did not cease to be something of a mediator; his advice to Marie
de Médicis was never that of a political firebrand. Still, surrounded
by firebrands--Vendôme and his like--it was difficult for the wisest
counsels to prevail, and Richelieu seems to have accepted the
inevitable, hoping that the warlike show made by the Queen’s friends
might so far impress the King as to incline him to listen to the
serious complaints poured into his ears by her and by them.
The effect was not precisely this, but Richelieu was in one way
content: it was not the Queen-mother who declared war. Louis XIII.
himself, egged on, not by Luynes, who doubted and hesitated, but by the
Prince de Condé, decided suddenly to march into Normandy and to crush
his enemies by armed force.
“I will not stay in Paris,” he said, “to see my kingdom made a prey and
my faithful servants oppressed.... My conscience accuses me of no want
of piety with regard to the Queen my mother, justice with regard to my
people, kind deeds with regard to the nobles of my kingdom. Therefore,
_allons!_”
The words had a ring of Henry IV., and they were justified by the
event. With a small army the King swept Normandy. Rouen and Caen made
no resistance; the Duc de Longueville and the Grand Prieur de Vendôme
fled before their royal master. The first week in August found the King
on Angevin soil; on the 7th he was within two miles of Angers, on high
ground commanding the road between the city and the Loire. Angers was
to his right; the village and bridges of the Ponts-de-Cé to his left.
For a month, ever since the King left Paris, confusion had reigned at
Angers. Negotiations had gone on furiously, for neither Louis XIII. nor
Luynes wished to come to actual blows with the Queen-mother. Richelieu,
in public and private, had done his best; in July, preaching before
the Queen and her Court, he warned her that no faithful subject could
advise her to rebel against her son, and begged her to consider that no
arms could triumph over an angel-guarded King. But all this was of no
avail. With hurry and rashness inconceivable, considering that neither
d’Épernon, Rohan, nor Mayenne had marched to join them, the warlike
party at Angers prepared for resistance.
Marie had a poor set of officers. The Comte de Soissons, supposed to
be in command, was a boy of eighteen; he had courage in plenty, but no
experience. The Duc de Vendôme was a clever, blustering coward; the Duc
de Nemours a courageous fool; the Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin was too old
for fighting. Louis de Marillac, afterwards a Marshal of France with a
tragic history, did more than any of them; but he also talked more, and
his plan for the defence was a foolish one. He and Vendôme attempted to
fortify the whole length of the road, about two miles, between Angers
and the Ponts-de-Cé, by an entrenchment which, according to Richelieu,
would have needed twenty thousand men to defend it. He gave his opinion
freely, but soldiers were not going to be advised by a churchman, and
“nothing could divert them from their enterprise.”
The sketchy fortification was not even finished, when the King’s troops
swooped down to the attack. His infantry fought in the flat meadows,
under cover of the lines of hedgerow trees; his cavalry plunged into
the Loire, a shorter way of reaching the bridges and the little old
castle that defended them. Once the passage of the Loire was in the
King’s hands, the Queen-mother’s retreat would be cut off and she would
be separated from her partisans in the south country: this was why the
King, advised by Condé, did not make a direct attack on the town.
The battle had hardly begun when the Duc de Retz, one of the Queen’s
commanders, seized with the idea that some treacherous negotiations
were going on in the background, threw up her cause and rode off the
field with 1500 men. The rest of the little army, about 2500 men
against 14,000, kept up an uncertain struggle along the road and the
bridges through some sweltering hours of the August day. A few hundred
lives were lost, and it was not till evening that the royal army
found itself in possession of the river branches and the little town
of Ponts-de-Cé. Even then the wounded governor of the castle, M. de
Bethancourt, held out there till the next morning with a garrison of
ten men.
Few of the Queen’s officers showed such a spirit. Long before the
battle or rout was over, César, Duc de Vendôme, son of Henry IV., came
galloping back into Angers with the news that all was lost.
“He entered her presence,” says Richelieu, “_avec un épouvantement
épouvantable_, saying, ‘Madame, I wish I were dead.’ On which one of
her ladies, who did not lack wit replied, _fort à propos_, ‘If that be
really your wish you should have stayed where you were....’ The Duc de
Vendôme was promptly followed by all the other chiefs, except the Comte
de Saint-Aignan, who was taken prisoner.”
So ended “la drôlerie des Ponts-de-Cé,” as the wags called it. Now was
the time for the peacemakers. After a few distracted hours, during
which, says Richelieu, “fear was absolutely mistress of all hearts and
reason had no place,” a treaty, quite amazingly favourable to the
Queen-mother, was drawn up by himself and the King’s envoys.
He must have wondered at the success of his own diplomacy. At first,
looking round on his terrified party, on the helpless city with a royal
army at her gates, he had advised Marie de Médicis to pack up her
jewels and ride off by night with a few hundred light horse, fording
the Loire and gaining the free country beyond, where she might make
her own terms with her enemies. But the unexpected moderation of the
King and Luynes made everything easy. The treaty of Angoulême was
confirmed; the Queen’s partisans were amnestied; the Ponts-de-Cé with
their defences were restored to her; her debts were paid; she had full
liberty to live where she pleased, so long as she remained in good
understanding with the King and his Ministers.
All this was the work of Richelieu, in concert with Luynes. The truth
was, that the rivalry of these two had reached a point where it became
plain that they were necessary to each other. Luynes knew, or fancied,
that the King was getting beyond his authority: the dismal boy had
grown into a man and a soldier. The clever and reckless Prince de Condé
made him feel what Luynes never felt or taught--the charm of war. And
he was ready, more ready than Luynes wished, for a really cordial
reconciliation with his mother. This took place at the old Maréchal de
Cossé’s magnificent Château de Brissac, south of the Loire, five days
after the battle. Marie again wept tears of joy. “I have you now,” said
Louis, “and you shall never escape me again.”
Detested as he was by the nobles and princes, shadowed by Condé,
threatened by the Queen-mother’s newly rising influence, Luynes thought
it politic to place Richelieu, as far as possible, definitely on his
side. “With great caresses,” he renewed the promise of a Cardinal’s
Hat. A messenger was sent to Rome with a letter from the King; and this
letter was soon followed by the despatch of Sébastien Bouthillier, ever
faithful--not, as some writers have represented him, a private envoy
from Richelieu himself, but authorised by Louis, ready at this moment
to gratify his mother in every way.
But a thousand intrigues, volumes of letters, promises made and broken
in France and in Italy, still lay between the Bishop of Luçon and his
ambition’s crown. Bouthillier remained at Rome two years, working
hard in the dark. He was made Bishop of Aire before his patron became
Cardinal, but nothing checked his devoted labour. Old Paul V. was
difficult and obstinate. He had enough French cardinals: the young
Bishop, to whose early consecration he had half unwillingly consented,
had not repaid him well: as Secretary of State, his attitude towards
the Holy See had been doubtful: he had shown some inclination of
late to ally the Queen-mother with the Huguenots. And besides all
this it was well understood at Rome that whatever letters, whatever
ambassadors, might be sent by Louis XIII., M. de Luynes was in no hurry.
While continuing his _sourdes et déloyales pratiques_--no secret to
Richelieu, who endured them with sphinx-like patience--Luynes did
his best to let all men believe him on the best of terms with the
Queen-mother’s chief counsellor. He suggested the union of their
families by a marriage between his nephew, Antoine de Beauvoir du
Roure, Seigneur de Combalet, and Richelieu’s niece, Marie Magdeleine
Vignerot du Pont-de-Courlay. She was a very pretty girl of sixteen;
he was a coarse, red-faced, awkward soldier. She was not a willing
sacrifice; neither was her uncle particularly eager; he hesitated long
indeed for several reasons, but the Queen-mother advised him, for fear
of Luynes, to consent, and the marriage was celebrated in Paris in
November, during the Court festivities that followed the triumphant
return of Louis XIII. from his short campaign against the Protestants
of Béarn.
Madame de Combalet’s unwelcome husband did not annoy her long; he was
killed at the siege of Montpellier in September 1622. The young widow,
a girl of independent spirit, worthy of her mother’s family, at once
resolved that she would not be sacrificed again. She made a vow--“un
peu brusquement,” says Tallemant--that she would become a Carmelite
nun.... “She dressed as modestly as a _dévote_ of fifty.... She wore a
gown of woollen stuff, and never lifted her eyes. With all this she was
a lady-in-waiting to the Queen-mother and never stirred from the Court.
She was then in the full bloom of her beauty. This sort of thing lasted
a long time.”
It lasted till the supreme power of the Cardinal made his niece equal
to the greatest ladies in France and a probable match for princes. But
Madame de Combalet--better known as Madame d’Aiguillon--kept her vow so
far as that she never married again.
The campaign against the Protestants of Béarn, undertaken by Louis
XIII. immediately after the battle of the Ponts-de-Cé, was successful
in its object of enforcing the royal edict of 1617 and restoring Church
property, now held by the Huguenots, to the use of the Catholic clergy.
At the same time, Henry IV.’s independent little kingdom of Béarn was
formally united to the kingdom of France. All this was done with much
noise and little bloodshed. It amused the King immensely. One game
for another, fighting was better than falconry. Through the darkening
days he galloped back to Paris, and had the additional joy of arriving
before he was expected.
“Louis XIII. arrived on November 7, early in the morning, accompanied
by fifty-four young nobles, riding at full speed, preceded by four
post-masters sounding the horn. He rode through the city, where he was
not expected. The noise made by his troop woke the citizens, they ran
to the windows, and as soon as the monarch was recognised there were
cries of _Vive le Roi_. The guard at the Louvre, seeing an armed troop
approach, stood on the defence. They soon learned that it was the King;
the palace rang with transports of joy; Louis XIII. flew to embrace his
mother and his wife. The day was for him one of triumph. The shops were
shut; they feasted in the streets and lighted bonfires in the evening.”
But the Huguenot party did not rejoice. “As soon,” says Richelieu,
“as His Majesty had brought Béarn back to its duty, there was talk of
the assembling of Huguenots in many parts of the kingdom.” And very
swiftly the matter advanced beyond talk. From the central assembly
at La Rochelle orders went out for the Protestants to rise in all
quarters. In May 1621 Louis XIII. started on a campaign against them
which, first under the influence of Luynes, then under that of Condé,
lasted through the greater part of two years--a campaign rather of long
sieges than of pitched battles, but costing many distinguished lives,
among them that of the Duc de Mayenne.
At the opening of this campaign, Luynes made himself Constable of
France. He was hardly qualified for the highest military office in the
kingdom, being not only timid as a soldier, but absolutely ignorant of
the science of war. His career, however, was now nearly at an end. His
star had been for some time waning, and Saint-Simon might well say that
he died at the right moment, for Louis, “whose eyes were opening,” was
beginning to turn against the man whom he had so heartily admired. “Il
fut enfin frappé des dimensions de ce colosse formé tout-à-coup,” grown
to supreme power in the very moment of Concini’s fall. He made perilous
confidences, from which wise courtiers fled, calling the Constable
“King Luynes,” and complaining violently of him and his brothers.
Luynes did not, as he believed, know his young King through and through.
The favourite fell as suddenly as he had risen. Three days of fever,
in a village near the castle of Monheurt, which the royal army was
besieging, carried off the richest and most powerful man in France.
A few days later, the servants who conveyed him to his own estates
for burial were playing at dice on his coffin while they rested their
horses.
It is not fair to judge Luynes entirely from the point of view of
enemies and rivals, even if one cannot accept the high praise bestowed
on him by his admirers--M. Victor Cousin for example. From many of the
vices of a favourite, Luynes was free; on the whole, his influence
over Louis XIII. was rather good than bad. He was good-tempered and
affectionate, though spoilt by power and terribly greedy. Clever, if
not courageous, and something of a statesman, it has been said that
he “anticipated in some respects the future policy of Richelieu.” He
certainly saved the King from being dominated by ambitious princes, and
he did his best to make obedient subjects of the Huguenots. But while
he carried on war in France against them, their defeats in Germany
were aggrandising Spain and the Empire and destroying that balance of
power which Richelieu was to restore. If Luynes had been Richelieu, the
Thirty Years War might have been stopped at its beginning.
Richelieu behaved with extraordinary discretion, even after the
favourite had been removed from his path. Effacing himself in public
life, he spent his time in assiduous attendance on Marie de Médicis,
both at Court and in her excursions into the provinces, during one
of which she paid him a visit at Coussay. To please her, they say,
he learned to play the lute; and scandalous gossips found pasture in
whispered tales as to the relations between the Queen and her handsome
Bishop. All falsehoods, probably; but in any case, at this date his
influence with her was unbounded, and as far as politics went he used
it well and wisely.
In the winter of 1621-2, when Louis XIII., after the death of Luynes,
turned to his mother with unusual affection, Richelieu advised the
King, through her, to cease fighting his own Protestant subjects and
rather, with arms or diplomacy, to check the rising, preponderating
power of the House of Hapsburg. The advice was not taken. The King’s
mind was now ruled by the restless Condé and by the cunning old
Chancellor Brûlart de Sillery and his son, Brûlart de Puisieux. For
more than two years longer, the cowardly policy and the selfish
intrigues of men like these were able to keep Richelieu helpless in the
background. And it was not till eight months after the death of Luynes
that a new Pope, Gregory XV., consented to place the Bishop of Luçon
upon the roll of Cardinals.
PART III
THE CARDINAL
1622-1642
CHAPTER I
1622-1624
Cardinal de Richelieu--Personal descriptions--A patron of the
arts--Court intrigues--Fancan and the pamphlets--The fall of the
Ministers--Cardinal de Richelieu First Minister of France.
On September 5, 1622--Richelieu’s thirty-seventh birthday--the faithful
Sébastien Bouthillier sang his _Nunc Dimittis_. Writing from Rome to
his brother, he said: “It seems to me that I now have nothing more to
desire in this world, since M. de Luçon is Cardinal.... Indeed, God
must destine him for the continuing of the great works in which he has
already been employed, since He has raised him to this deserved dignity
in spite of the most powerful impediments.”
The news arrived in France when Louis XIII. was at Avignon, his troops
being engaged in that unlucky siege of Montpellier which closed his
second campaign against the Protestants. A letter was immediately sent
to the Queen-mother, who had spent the summer at Pougues-les-Eaux and
was on her way to Lyons with her favourite Bishop in attendance. It
reached her at a village on the road called La Pacaudière; there, she
herself announced the news to Richelieu. From Lyons he started for
Avignon, travelling down the Rhône, to thank the King in person. Three
months later, the whole Court being at Lyons, his cardinal’s biretta
was presented to him by His Majesty with solemn ceremony at the
Archbishop’s palace. The first thing he did with the red cap so long
desired was to lay it at the feet of Marie de Médicis. It would always
remind him, he said, that he had vowed to shed his blood in her service.
And now--if one may venture on a quotation from M. Hanotaux’ vivid
pages--“he moves to his right place, among the great and nobly born.
His dignity is but the finishing touch. He is thirty-seven years old;
thin, slender, hair and beard black, eye clear and piercing, he still
has beauty, if beauty is compatible with an evident, intimidating
superiority. He has the colourless complexion of a man worn by watching
and suffering, gnawed by his own thoughts. It may with truth be said of
him that the blade wears out the sheath; and indeed, long, slight and
flexible, he is like a sword. He places the cardinal’s red cap on his
triangular head. He wraps himself in flowing folds of purple. Thus, all
red, he enters history, realising the most complete and powerful image
of a ‘cardinal’ that imagination and art have ever dreamed.”
After this striking picture, it is interesting to read the impressions
of Michelet, whose prejudices, historical and religious, hardly
permitted him to be fair to Richelieu’s genius, not to mention his
character.
Philippe de Champagne’s well-known portrait, painted at a much later
date than 1622, but breathing all the stateliness, the sense of innate
power, which M. Hanotaux so finely suggests, is the text for Michelet’s
famous discourse. Philippe’s art is so true and so penetrating, he
says, that it answers alike to historical knowledge and to popular
impressions.
“In that grey-bearded, dull-eyed phantom with the delicate thin hands,
history recognises the grandson of Henry the Third’s provost who shot
Guise.” [N.B.--Richelieu was the Provost’s son, and the Provost did not
shoot Guise.]
[Illustration: CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU
FROM A PORTRAIT BY PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAGNE]
“He comes towards you. You are not reassured. The personage has an
air of life. But is it really a man? A spirit? Yes, certainly an
intelligence, firm, clear, luminous shall I say, or of sinister
brilliancy? If he made a few steps forward, we should be face to
face. I have no wish for it. I fear that strong head means nothing
within--no heart, no bowels. I have seen too much, in my studies of
sorcery, of those evil spirits who will not remain below, but return,
and once again move the world.
“What contrasts in him! So hard, so supple, so entire, so broken! By
what tortures must he have been ground down, made and unmade, or let
us say, _désarticulé_, to have become this eminently artificial thing
which walks and does not walk, which advances without apparent sight
or sound, as if gliding over a noiseless carpet ... then, arrived,
overturns all.
“He gazes on you from the depth of his mystery, the sphinx in the red
robe. I dare not say, from the depth of his knavery. For, contrary
to the ancient Sphinx, who dies if divined, this man seems to say:
‘Quiconque me devine en mourra.’”
* * * * *
Richelieu was now a Prince of the Church, equal to the greatest in
the land. One of the ends of his “sfrenata ambizione” was gained, but
he still had to wait till the incapacity of the Ministers of France
compelled Louis XIII., half willingly, half unwillingly, for he admired
the Cardinal’s talents while he feared his dominating character, to
summon him to supreme political power.
During the twenty months of waiting, Richelieu indulged the natural
tastes for building and collecting which had been, no doubt, trained
and encouraged by Marie de Médicis, herself so great a lover of
art in its more splendid forms. At this time and a little later he
bought several châteaux at no great distance from Paris--Fleury,
near Fontainebleau; Bois-le-Vicomte, which he afterwards exchanged
with Gaston d’Orléans for Champigny, the hereditary property of
his eldest daughter, the heiress of Montpensier; Limours, which he
sold, after spending large sums on beautifying it; and Rueil, near
Saint-Germain. This last, when bought by the Cardinal, was merely a
small country-house. He made a magnificent place of it, with moats and
terraces, a beautiful park, and gardens in the Italian style which
were among the most famous of the century; cascades, fountains, arches,
grottos, and a population of statues. He was a great buyer of statuary,
with which all his houses and gardens were largely adorned. He posed
as a very considerable patron of art, but his purchases were not made
without economy; the sale of various ecclesiastical charges did not
bring in an unlimited fortune. Nor was his taste always faultless, even
by the pseudo-classical standard of the time.
In August 1623 he wrote a long letter to his private secretary, Michel
Le Masle, Prior of Les Roches--formerly his servant at the Collège de
Navarre--who had been sent to Italy on confidential business connected
partly with the Queen-mother’s Florentine affairs, partly with the
election of a new Pope, Urban VIII. Having treated of these subjects,
the Cardinal goes on to private matters of his own.
“The Sieur Franchine advises me to ask if you can send me some marble
statues and a marble basin; for he says that, not being real antiques,
one can have them very cheap. I particularly want a statue about three
feet high, and a handsome basin a foot and a half in diameter, to put
on his head. If you have this made to order the statue must hold it
with both hands above his head. You will remember that, being for a
fountain, the statue and the basin must be pierced.... M. d’Alincourt
five or six months ago had five very cheap statues brought from Rome.
You will inquire into the price of marble, the charges of sculptors, in
order that we may judge, on your return, whether the work may better be
done there or in France.”
M. des Roches is then directed to find out the cost of “the following
statues, in bronze”:
“A Jupiter six feet high, with the face of the late King, a crown on
his head and a sceptre in his hand, dressed as Jupiter _à l’antique_.
“A Juno of the same size, with the face of the Queen, the eyes slightly
turned towards heaven, to which she will point with one hand.
“A god Terminus, nine feet high, made after the sculptor’s fancy, to be
set on a column in the midst of the garden.
“A Hercules eight or nine feet high, holding up his club in the air,
pierced so that it may throw out water.”
And so forth. In his reply, M. des Roches was bold enough to question
his patron’s taste on several points; remarking, for instance, that
though water might spring forth from Samson’s jawbone of an ass, it
could hardly do so from the club of Hercules.
Water played a great part in the garden decoration of those days.
Canals, cascades, lakes, fountains glittered and splashed everywhere;
and keen amusement was found in the various tricks played by unexpected
_jets d’eau_. At Rueil the Cardinal had a wonderful grotto with a
cavern into which he used to beguile his unlucky guests.
“An infinity of little _jets d’eau_ spring out of the ground; figures
of animals, of every kind, spurt water on every side; and when one
tries to hurry out to escape all this water, the doors are blockaded
by heavy water-falls; and outside the grotto other spouting figures
complete the soaking of those who have passed through all this water.”
Such was the delightful humour of the time. And it was not only ladies
and gentlemen, finely dressed, who were subjected to these little
“surprises.” Walls were painted with marvellous perspectives which
deceived the very birds of the air. They met their death while flying,
as they thought, in the blue firmament of heaven.
Rueil was the Cardinal’s favourite residence outside Paris. His town
house at this time was in the fashionable Place Royale; two or three
years later he moved to the Petit-Luxembourg, a charming hôtel in
the Rue Vaugirard, close to Marie de Médicis’ new palace. While high
in her favour he had much to do with the artistic decoration of the
Luxembourg. He superintended her financial affairs, and her builders,
painters, furnishers worked to some extent under his orders. De Brosse,
her architect, was supplied with money by his authority. Rubens, who
was now painting the magnificent series of pictures in her honour;
Poussin and Philippe de Champagne, young artists not yet famous,
employed in smaller work about the palace, were dependent on him. We
find him inquiring through M. des Roches if Guido Reni of Bologna,
then at the height of his glory, will come to France for a couple of
years to paint the late King’s battles in a gallery of the Queen’s new
palace. But the Pope and all the Italian princes were struggling for
Guido, and he did not care at this time to leave his own country.
While Richelieu and the Queen-mother waited and looked on, _se
ménageant_, as a French writer says, and amusing themselves with
matters of art, the confusion in State affairs went on deepening. The
weakness and irresolution of the Ministers were destroying, day by day,
French influence in Europe, while the power of Spain and Austria went
on growing. Old allies of France were biting the dust. The progress of
the war in Germany was against the Protestants; the Elector Palatine,
King of Bohemia, had been driven from his dominions, and James I., his
father-in-law, saw no wiser course than to bid for the help of Spain
by marrying his heir to the Infanta; it was in this very year 1623
that Prince Charles and the Duke of Buckingham visited Paris on their
way to Madrid. Such an alliance might have sealed the fate of France
and almost made her a vassal of Spain; she was indeed approaching that
state, in the helpless hands of Sillery and Puisieux.
At home the Court was full of quarrels and intrigues: the King, uneasy,
discontented, and wilful enough, had not the wisdom or the character
needed to dismiss his useless Ministers and to put a strong man in
their place. He hunted more desperately than ever, and after a year
or two of _rapprochement_ was again becoming estranged from Queen
Anne, who for her part fell completely under the influence of the
beautiful young widow of Luynes, appointed by him superintendent of her
household. After the death of Luynes, this appointment was violently
disputed by Madame de Montmorency, widow of the old Constable, who had
formerly held it. Madame de Luynes’ chance of keeping it lay in her
second marriage with the Duc de Chevreuse, which ranged the great House
of Guise on her side. The whole Court, men and women, flung themselves
into this quarrel; duels were fought and bribes exacted. Finally, the
King and the Ministers decided to suppress the office altogether,
to the bitter disappointment of both parties and the wrath of the
young Queen. The Queen-mother, with her favourite counsellor, and the
Prince de Condé, fallen into disfavour at Court and withdrawn in his
government of Berry, were the persons of chief importance who stood
aloof from the fray, each watching for some change which might throw
political power into the hands of the Prince or the Cardinal.
Richelieu, for his part, was neither patient nor idle, and while
outwardly absorbed by palaces, pictures, statues, was working
underground with an energy hardly realised by the men of his own day.
He had few confidants. Père Joseph, as always, knew and understood
him best and admired him most loyally; but Père Joseph was hardly
in sympathy with the instrument chiefly used by Richelieu at this
time--Fancan, the famous pamphleteer.
This strange and clever being was a canon of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois.
His family, Langlois by name, had long been attached to the fortunes
of the house of Richelieu, and his brother was the Cardinal’s own man
of business. The Sieur de Fancan had had a wider experience in the
employment of the Duc de Longueville and of the Comtesse de Soissons.
He had done some diplomatic work, and had developed bold opinions of
his own in matters of politics and religion, posing as “bon français”
in opposition to Luynes and the Spanish ultra-Catholic trend of
affairs. His Protestant leanings carried him far, according to the
correspondence with Germany and England discovered after his death.
For several years Fancan was high in Richelieu’s favour. Unknown,
anonymous, brilliant, unscrupulous, he and one or two others made
public opinion in France. His pamphlets or _libelles_, in their blue
covers, were sold by hundreds on the bridges and in the book-shops
of Paris. They attacked the Ministers of the moment in verse or
prose full of ironical fury, personal violence and political wisdom,
coarse, impudent and strong. Either in a direct or roundabout way they
were addressed to the King. Sometimes France, on her dying bed, held
converse with her ancient heroes; sometimes Henry the Great talked with
the leaders of his time; sometimes unworthy favourites were gibbeted;
sometimes the people cried to their sovereign in bitter complaint of
religious tyranny and civil war, and boldly offered the counsel for
which nobody asked them.
The King, the Ministers, the nobles, the literary men, the citizens,
all read these pamphlets, talked of them, and did not forget them.
Louis was much influenced by them; they touched his conscience and
sense of truth, if they deepened the gloom in which he followed his
hounds in the Forest of Saint-Germain. In the days of the Brûlarts and
their successor, the Marquis de la Vieuville, while the affairs of
the kingdom were slipping from bad to worse, the pamphlets not only
complained more loudly than ever, they advised more strongly than ever,
and the King knew well that their advice was good, however unwilling
he might be to take it. They told him that there was one man in France
whose hand ought to be on the helm, a man who would serve his own
country and his own King, not the interests of a foreign power; a man
of high courage, prudence and incomparable dexterity, as wise as he was
brilliant, ready, like a burning torch, to consume himself in giving
light to the State. This man would be the saviour of France, renewing
the great days of Henry. It was hardly necessary to name the Cardinal
de Richelieu.
Fancan only expressed the minds of all thinking men French or
foreign, private or public, who were independent of the Ministers
and above political jealousy. But while thus serving France and the
Cardinal, he was too careful to serve himself. He was in fact a secret
agent, receiving pay from both Catholic and Protestant powers, and
successfully cheating them all. The independent game became dangerous
when Richelieu was supreme. In the year 1627 it is noted in the
_Memoirs_ that “un nommé Fancan,” a spy whose business was to betray
and ruin the State, was imprisoned in the Bastille. “All his ends were
evil,” says Richelieu, “and the means he used to attain them were
detestable and wicked. His ordinary work was the making of _libelles_
in order to decry the government”(!).
A year later, Fancan died in prison. The whole story is mysterious; but
Richelieu was as quick to rid himself of a suspected friend as of an
open enemy.
In the winter of 1623-4 the Ministry of Sillery and Puisieux came
suddenly to an end. These two men were followed into retirement by the
scorn and hatred of a public which knew that they had used their power
not only to weaken France in Europe, but to pile up large fortunes for
themselves. The Chancellor was succeeded immediately by his colleague,
M. de la Vieuville, a man of a bolder spirit and more patriotic
views, but too nervous, irresolute and indiscreet to guide France
through her present difficulties. Fancan, the ill-rewarded, attacked
the new Minister with new pamphlets, accusing him and his family of
appropriating public funds. To do La Vieuville justice, he began his
rule by a very unpopular but necessary move towards economy in the
system of universal pensions. It must also be remembered in his favour
that he advised Louis XIII. to listen to the general voice and at this
critical time to demand the services of Richelieu.
But neither he nor the King intended to give that formidable personage
any real authority. Louis shrank in terror from “cet esprit altier
et dominateur,” replying to his mother, when she pressed him to
admit her favourite to the royal Council, in such prophetic words
as these--“Madame, I know him better than you do: he is a man of
immeasurable ambition.” With the idea of utilising the Cardinal’s
talents while keeping him outside power, La Vieuville invented a new
subordinate Council for the management of foreign affairs, and offered
him the presidency. This did not mean a seat on the King’s Council, or
any independent decision, for, as Richelieu pointed out in his dry and
courteous letter of refusal, any resolution passed by this new body was
liable to be negatived by the King and his Council. He excused himself
on the ground of ill-health and of lack of recent experience in foreign
affairs, declaring that he preferred a private life to “un si grand
emploi.”
It was not difficult to understand these excuses. What was to be done
with him? The King and La Vieuville tried to send him as ambassador to
Spain, then to Rome; but he would not go. The Queen-mother obstinately
pressed his claim to be admitted to the Council; she spared neither
her son nor his Minister; she even held aloof from the Court in her
discontent, and it seems that the fear of another serious breach with
her had much influence with the King.
Towards the end of April, 1624, the complications in home and foreign
affairs increasing every day, the pamphlets stinging more sharply,
public and private voices waxing louder, La Vieuville found himself
forced to advise the King to admit Richelieu to his Council--and this
in the full consciousness that the Cardinal’s rise must mean his own
fall. Even now he tried, in self-defence, to limit his new colleague’s
power for mischief. He was to sit on the Council for the purpose of
giving his opinion, but nothing more; he might use the influence,
but not the authority, of a Minister of the Crown. Richelieu swept
this fragile barrier easily away; indeed, from his own account, he
ignored it altogether, and history would have forgotten it, but for
some detailed reports sent from Paris to his masters by the Florentine
ambassador.
The Cardinal’s _Memoirs_, with his letter to the King, show him by no
means eager to accept the offered place which had been for so long “his
one thought by day, his one dream by night.” All the intrigues of the
affair were open to him, and if he despised and distrusted La Vieuville
and the rest of the Council, he had little confidence in the jealous,
uncertain temper of the King. Writing to Louis, he began by frankly
acknowledging that God had given him “some enlightenment and strength
of mind.” These qualities, however, were rendered unserviceable by
extreme bodily weakness--so much so that he had lately besought the
Queen-mother to relieve him from his light duties as superintendent of
her household. Such indeed were his infirmities that he could not live
without frequent excursions into the country. He added that he had many
enemies, especially those of the Queen-mother, who would certainly, on
his account, do their best to make mischief between their Majesties;
while he assured the King that he would rather die than do anything
against the welfare of the State, for which he would shed the last drop
of his blood.
These same enemies would take advantage of the fact that the Cardinal’s
opinion might frequently differ from that of His Majesty’s other
Ministers; for, once on the Council, he would go his own way as to
what he thought best for the King’s service. He would not be merely
an ornamental figure, set up “to please the public imagination and to
dazzle the eyes of the world,” but an honest statesman who would advise
plainly and act boldly. All this he wished the King to understand, and
underlying all this was the question--would Louis, as a loyal master,
stand between a faithful servant and those enemies?
If, in spite of all considerations, the King remained in the same mind,
the Cardinal said that he could only obey. The one condition was that,
while working regularly with the rest of the Council, he must ask to
be spared “the visits and solicitations of private persons,” which,
besides occupying his time uselessly, would complete the ruin of his
health.
It was a proud, straightforward letter. In it Louis XIII. felt the
first strong grasp of the hand which was to hold and lead him almost to
his life’s end.
Richelieu entered the Council on April 26, 1624. His first act was to
demand precedence, as Cardinal, of all the other Ministers, and this
was granted after long arguments; but he did not reach supreme power
till the following autumn, when La Vieuville’s incapable government
ended in sudden disgrace. Those were dishonest times; and it seems
most probable that Richelieu, while outwardly friendly to La Vieuville,
was not only opposing his uncertain policy but hastening his fall by
the underground work of Fancan and other paid pamphleteers.
On August 13 the Marquis de la Vieuville carried his forced resignation
to the King at Saint-Germain, was arrested by the captain of the
guard and driven off to be imprisoned in the castle of Amboise. The
government of France was already in the hands of Cardinal de Richelieu,
and Louis XIII. had accepted the list of Ministers presented by him.
The eighteen years’ career had begun which changed France, making
absolutism possible, bringing in the Age of Louis XIV. and as a
consequence, the Revolution.
Richelieu wrote to Père Joseph, who had lately been made Provincial of
the Capuchin Order:
“You,” he said, “have been God’s chief agent in bringing me to this
place of honour.... I pray you to hasten your journey, and to come to
me as soon as possible, to share with me the management of affairs.
There are pressing matters that I can confide to no one else, nor
decide without your opinion. Come then quickly to receive these proofs
of my esteem.”
From this time down to Père Joseph’s death, in 1638, the two Eminences,
the Red and the Grey, were seldom parted.