1628-1630
The Duc de Nevers and the war of the Mantuan Succession--The rebellion
in Languedoc--A new Italian campaign--Richelieu as Commander-in-Chief.
A few days after the submission of La Rochelle a great storm destroyed
the mole which had been the city’s destruction. Winds and floods
devastated the west of France, and the Cardinal and the Chancellor were
nearly drowned in crossing the Loire on their journey with the Court
back to Paris.
There was no time for delay. France was on the eve of a new war; and,
though the Huguenot question was not really settled as long as the
Duc de Rohan kept rebellion stirring in Languedoc, Richelieu felt
himself safe in laying it aside for the moment. Spain and Savoy had
attacked the Duke of Mantua; his fortress of Casale in Montferrat had
been blockaded by Spanish troops for some months before the fall of La
Rochelle, but had held out gallantly in the hope of relief from France;
indeed, a body of French volunteers had already forced their way in,
led by the Cardinal’s trusted agent, M. de Guron, whom he had sent from
La Rochelle to manage matters with Savoy until the French were free to
act openly.
The difficulty now was that French opinion found itself deeply divided
on the question of Mantua. The new Duke was Charles de Gonzague, Duc de
Nevers, who had succeeded Vincenzo di Gonzaga as a lineal descendant of
the old family. His succession to Mantua and Montferrat was disputed
in various quarters and for various reasons. The Duke of Savoy claimed
Montferrat, the Duke of Guastalla claimed Mantua; Spain would not have
a French prince ruling in Italy, and the Emperor Ferdinand II. insisted
on his right as suzerain to hold the provinces and to decide the matter.
The Duc de Nevers was one of the greatest nobles in France. And not
only that: he was the head of the house of Paleologus, and the natural
heir, had it still existed, to the throne of Constantinople. He was a
high-minded, magnificent personage, brave, chivalrous, romantic--Père
Joseph’s intimate friend and fellow-crusader. Under the regency he had
been a disturbing element, and Marie de Médicis hated him for reasons
of her own. In those days her rage against him had led her to speak
scornfully of his birth and his race.
“Which coming to the Duke’s knowledge,” says M. de Montglat, “he said
that he knew well the respect he owed her as the mother of his King;
but that, on the other hand, every one was aware that the Gonzagas were
princes before the Medici were gentlemen. These words so piqued the
Queen that she never forgave him.”
Therefore there was a private motive of revenge behind the strong
opposition offered by the Queen-mother and her friends--the Chancellor
Marillac, on this occasion, joining his voice once more with those
of the Cardinal de Bérulle, the Princesse de Conti and her lover
Bassompierre, and all those of the Court who hated and envied
Richelieu--to the plan of marching at once, with the victorious army
of La Rochelle, to the succour of the Duke of Mantua. They argued that
the troops needed rest after their eighteen months of hardship; that
the Huguenot party was not yet really crushed and would have time to
rise again; that the Duke of Mantua’s difficulties mattered little
in comparison with a peaceful settlement at home. To these zealous
Catholics it appeared horribly inconsistent that the Pope should send
congratulations and command _Te Deums_, and that a Cardinal’s Hat
should be bestowed on Alphonse de Richelieu, now Archbishop of Lyons--a
striking departure from the precedent which forbade that honour to two
brothers--all this to glorify the conquest of La Rochelle; while the
hero of that conquest was ready and eager to plunge into war with the
Catholic powers, Austria and Spain.
This was the keenest trial of strength that had yet taken place between
the Queen-mother and her former _protégé_. To all her arguments she
added those of family affections and old alliance: the Queen of Spain
and the future Duchess of Savoy were the King’s sisters; peace with
Spain and the Empire had been the chief object of her own policy as
Regent. In reply, Richelieu maintained his views: the honour of France
was concerned in the Mantuan affair; the Duke’s legitimate right could
not be disputed; and if France were to suffer the pretensions of Spain,
Savoy, and the Empire, she would be acting a part both cowardly and
foolish. Never would Louis XIII.’s Minister consent thus to degrade his
King. The Cardinal went on to make a statement of his policy and his
intentions, promising that by the month of May Casale would be relieved
and the royal army free to deal with the Huguenots in Languedoc. “So
that your Majesty will, I hope, return victorious to Paris in the month
of August.” In a more personal strain he reproached the King for want
of confidence, and frankly pointed out, in Marie’s presence, the faults
of character which made him a difficult master to serve. Then once more
he alluded to his own weak health, and offered to lay down the burden
of office, too heavy, he said, for him to bear.
Marie de Médicis listened, and perhaps, with her eyes fixed on her
gloomy and worried son, hoped for an instant that the Cardinal’s career
was ended. Nothing of the kind. “When the King had heard all this with
as much patience as the humours of the great generally bestow on the
most important affairs, he told the Cardinal that he was resolved to
profit by what had been said, but would hear no more of his retirement.”
From this conference, says M. Martin, “Richelieu _sortit roi_.” Our
point of view shows this as a fact; but neither the Cardinal himself
nor his enemies saw it at the time. The Queen-mother’s hostility was
only now becoming open and active; the “Day of Dupes,” when Richelieu
ran his greatest risk and reached his zenith of power, was still almost
two years distant.
The King left Paris for the south on January 15, 1629, travelling
through eastern France, while the army of La Rochelle, under Marshals
Schomberg, Bassompierre, and de Créquy, having “refreshed itself” among
the mountains of Auvergne, marched to join His Majesty in Dauphiné.
Cardinal de Richelieu travelled with the King from Châlons. On his way
from Paris he stopped at Les Caves, near Nogent-sur-Seine, a country
house belonging to his old friend Claude Bouthillier, then a Secretary
of State, afterwards Surintendant des Finances, the father of young
Léon Bouthillier, Comte de Chavigny, who became Richelieu’s right
hand and was loved by him as a son. At Les Caves the Cardinal met the
Prince de Condé, and conferred with him as to the crushing of the
Huguenots in Languedoc. But he had room for other thoughts. A letter
to M. Bouthillier, written on leaving Les Caves, is attractive in its
detachment from the whirlpool of politics and war.
“I cannot leave your house to pursue my way,” he writes, “without
thanking you for the good cheer Madame Bouthillier has bestowed on us;
which was such, that if you had yourself been here you could have added
nothing to it.... Also I must tell you that whereas you described this
house as a farm, it may be called a very fine and pretty house, leaving
nothing to be desired but the building of a gallery on the left hand of
the entrance, in order to match the right wing....” In a postscript,
the Cardinal advises M. Bouthillier as to the purchase of a château
at Pont-sur-Yonne, where in later years, rich and beneficent, M. le
Surintendant and his wife often entertained royalty.
A month later found Louis XIII. and his army at the foot of the Alps,
on the frontiers of France and Piedmont. Some negotiations between
Richelieu and the Prince of Piedmont, the King’s brother-in-law,
having ended in nothing, the French proceeded to invade Savoyard
territory. It was not an easy matter, in the first days of March, over
mountain paths buried in snow, to reach and to storm the rocky and
barricaded gorge which, beyond Mont Genèvre on the French side, led to
the fortified town of Susa, the gateway of Piedmont. The whole gorge
was commanded by Spanish and Piedmontese troops, firing down on the
invaders; the Duke of Savoy himself was in the field.
In the dark hours of early morning, Louis XIII. led his regiments to
the attack. Plunging on foot through the snow, “freely hazarding his
person,” says Aubery, “and running the same risk as the least soldier
in his army,” the story goes that the victory was largely owing to
his own resolute courage. The marshals in command, they say, and even
the Cardinal, were inclined to hesitate at an adventure that looked
so dangerous. The King climbed the mountain and met a goatherd, who
showed him a path by which the barricades and their defenders could be
out-flanked. While the main body, under the marshals, rushed furiously
on the barricades and cleared the gorge at the point of the sword, the
royal musketeers scaled the rocks and drove down the enemy, first to
the barricades, then along the road to Susa. In the helpless rout of
his troops the Duke of Savoy narrowly escaped being taken prisoner.
A few days were enough to reduce the romantic mountain town of Susa,
and the relief of Casale followed at once; for the furious energy of
the French, acting as one man under the inspiring force of Richelieu,
was too much for Charles Emmanuel of Savoy. He sent his daughter-in-law
in great magnificence to visit her royal brother at Susa, and hastily
made a treaty with France, of which he was not long in repenting;
but the immediate and necessary consequence was the retirement
from Montferrat of the Spanish general, Don Gonzalez de Cordova. A
half-promise that Philip IV. of Spain would induce the Emperor to grant
the new Duke of Mantua his desired investiture was not so easy of
fulfilment.
There were diplomatie wheels within wheels. While Richelieu’s
negotiations with Savoy and Spain were still in progress, Spain was
turning a favourable ear to the Duc de Rohan, who proposed to “keep
France in a state of war as long as His Catholic Majesty pleased”;
undertaking that his party, if successful in establishing a Protestant
republic in the south, should assure liberty of conscience and the free
exercise of their religion to Catholics, on the condition of a handsome
subsidy and pensions for himself and his brother. This agreement was
actually signed at Madrid on May 3, when Richelieu was still at Susa,
the King and the larger part of the army having already re-crossed the
Alps and marched through Dauphiné to the Rhône. So far the prophecy had
been fulfilled: the month of May had found the royal forces free to
join Condé, Montmorency and d’Épernon, and thus to deal with the rebels
in Languedoc.
They were not capable of much resistance. The brothers Rohan and
Soubise, with their friends, had no regular army to oppose the King
of France and his fifty thousand men. A recent treaty between France
and England had deprived them of Charles I.’s possible help, and
Richelieu’s movements were far too quick for Spain. By the middle
of May the royal armies had poured like a devastating torrent over
Languedoc and part of Guienne, destroying the green crops, the growing
corn, all the year’s food of the strong little towns and villages, and
driving the scattered people to the mountains. Every detail of the
campaign was planned by Richelieu, and it was he who arranged that
the King himself should escape the early summer heats by crossing the
Cévennes to the Tarn country and carrying out there the general scheme
of destruction.
The first step in the campaign was the decisive one, and cost more to
both sides than all the rest. Privas on its high ridge, the gallant
little stronghold of the Vivarais, seventeen years earlier the seat
of a general Protestant Synod, was now called upon literally to give
its life for the cause. After a fortnight’s fighting siege, during
which many lives were lost, the inhabitants and the garrison insisted
that their brave commander, St. André de Montbrun, should make terms
with the King. These were refused, and the surrender had to be
unconditional. Town and people were treated with terrible severity.
Both besiegers and besieged have been blamed for a furious fire which
broke out as the royal troops were entering the fortress; in the awful
night of confusion and massacre that followed, Privas was sacked and
burnt to the ground with every circumstance of savagery.
At such times Louis XIII. was hard and inflexible. He would have hanged
St. André, had not the Cardinal intervened to save him. Indeed, on this
occasion and others, Richelieu showed a humanity for which most writers
have given him little credit. Towards political offenders he was indeed
“the Iron Cardinal”--no mercy for those who came in the way of his
great designs; but he had pity on the helpless fugitives of Privas.
He was ill in bed on the fatal night of May 29. “But in spite of his
illness,” writes Aubery, “having mounted his horse with two hundred
gentlemen, he went himself to meet the crowd of inhabitants who had
forsaken their homes and their goods; and among others he saved twelve
young girls from sixteen to eighteen years old, caused them to be
led in safety to the Château d’Autremont, and recommended them with
much charity to the Lady of that place, who took great care of them.
Afterwards one brought to him an infant of seven months, found in the
arms of his dead mother; and having praised and rewarded the soldier
for saving from among the dead him who had but begun to live, he gave
the child a nurse, and commanded that he should be well brought up and
should be called Fortunat de Privas....”
That such actions should be remembered as exceptional, only proves what
was then the usual fate of wretched non-combatants. The well-known
horrors of the Thirty Years War, then raging in Germany, soon to be
shared in by France, are witness enough. Compared with Tilly and
Mansfeldt in their campaigns of mercenary ravage and slaughter,
Richelieu’s dealings with the Huguenot faction appear, considering all
things, actually gentle.
After the taking of Privas, the royal armies swept the south with
little difficulty. One after another the towns and fortified villages
opened their gates and laid down their arms, and when the King made his
triumphal entry into Nîmes, early in July, Richelieu had attained the
first great end of his policy; the Huguenot “state within the State”
had practically ceased to exist.
The Duc de Rohan and the Protestants of the south, once conquered,
were treated with moderation. A general amnesty was offered: Rohan
retired to Venice, a free man. Liberty of conscience was assured by the
confirmation of the Edict of Nantes. The one severe condition was the
razing of all the Huguenot fortifications throughout the provinces.
This had to be accepted and carried out, sorely against the will of
the many proud little towns and village strongholds scattered through
the mountains and valleys of that stern country, which now found
themselves tame and defenceless under the power of the Crown. Only one
town, Montauban of fighting memory, stood out and refused to destroy
the walls and towers that were her glory and pride. She refused so
obstinately that the King, tired of his hot campaign, began his journey
back to Paris on July 15, leaving the Cardinal, himself ill of fever,
to bring her to reason.
This he did with such success, after two or three weeks of argument,
the Montauban deputies following him from town to town, that they at
last consented to swallow the bitter pill of complete submission. In
the middle of August he entered Montauban peaceably with a strong
force, and was received with almost royal honours and specially
harangued by the Protestant ministers. After lingering a few days to
see the destruction of the ramparts well begun, “il retourna triomphant
à Paris, au grand crève-cœur de ses ennemis.”
But those enemies were increasing in number, strength, and confidence.
The chances seemed far more even to lookers-on of that day than
to us, who possess the balances of history. The reigning Queen,
the Queen-mother, Monsieur, all the princes of the blood except
Condé--Alexandre de Vendôme had died at Vincennes in the early spring
of 1629, and his family held Richelieu responsible--most of the great
nobles and ladies of the Court; statesmen such as Michel de Marillac;
Marshals of France such as his brother Louis, lately promoted to that
rank, Bassompierre, and others; ecclesiastics such as the Cardinal
de Bérulle--all these, openly or secretly, for personal or political
reasons, were opposed to Richelieu. He had his hearty adherents,
the followers of his star, but they were few and rather clever than
powerful. His only real support was the King. And Louis XIII. showed
considerable strength of character in standing by his Minister against
such odds, social and religious.
Arriving victorious at Fontainebleau, Richelieu was received with
angry coldness by Marie de Médicis. He had not only carried out the
policy she hated as to Mantua, Spain, and Savoy, but he had shown the
rebel Huguenots what seemed to her a scandalous toleration. A furious
jealousy of his influence with the King was so evident a motive of her
rage, that the Cardinal found it politic to bow before the storm.
Once more he solemnly offered his resignation to the King; once more
Louis, torn between the claims of his mother and his Minister, having
spent a day in tears, refused to receive it. On the contrary, he heaped
fresh honours on the Cardinal. By letters patent he became “chief
Minister of State,” the first time in French history that such an
appointment had been formally made. A kind of peace was patched up with
the Queen-mother. She and her friends only bided their time; the death
of Cardinal de Bérulle, a few days after Richelieu’s return from the
south, removed one of the best of her counsellors and left her more
completely in the hands of a violent faction.
Now, in the autumn, the Duke of Mantua found himself again in
a desperate plight. The Emperor Ferdinand, victorious over the
Protestants of the north, turned to revenge the check that France had
given to his feudal authority and to the armies of Spain. The unlucky
Grisons found their country once more overrun, this time by an imperial
army under Marshal Colalto, which descended the Val Tellina and stormed
across the Lombard plain to the siege of Mantua, very slightly hindered
by a Venetian force which had come to the Duke’s aid. At the same time
the valiant old Marquis Spinola, the Spanish governor of Milan, invaded
Montferrat and again besieged Casale, where M. de Toiras, the hero of
the Isle of Ré, was now in command.
It looked as if the French were to lose all advantages gained by
their brilliant spring campaign. The whole aspect of affairs was
alarming, for the danger was not only that which the Duke of Mantua’s
imploring letters pressed upon the King. Imperial armies were massing
on the eastern frontier of France, threatening Champagne, and it was
necessary that a French force should be sent to watch them. The Duke
of Lorraine’s loyalty was uncertain. It cannot have been without
misgivings that Richelieu placed that gate of the kingdom in charge of
his suspected enemy Louis de Marillac, with Monsieur, the light and
treacherous, in nominal chief command.
As to himself, he left Court intrigues behind him, left his master to
the persuasions of men and women who hated him, and accepted the royal
commission of “Lieutenant-Général de là les Monts,” which not only gave
him the supreme command of the new Italian campaign, but made him the
actual representative of Royalty in all matters political and military.
No Constable of France had ever reached such a height of delegated
power.
At ten o’clock in the morning of December 29 he took leave, says
Aubery, of the King and the Queens at the Louvre. “He then dined in the
chamber of Madame de Combalet, his niece, then lady-in-waiting to the
Queen-mother, and towards three o’clock in the afternoon he mounted
into his coach, having with him the Cardinal de la Valette and the Duc
de Montmorency, who were both at one _portière_, and the Maréchaux de
Bassompierre and de Schomberg at the other. Outside the gates of the
Louvre he was joined by a troop of a hundred cavaliers, all men of
rank, who accompanied him for half a league outside the city, where his
train and his guards awaited him.... Thus he took his way, in the depth
of winter, to carry succour to Montferrat, leaving the Court and Paris
in a season whose rigour is particularly felt in the open country.”
Letters written by the Cardinal from Lyons show how his thoughts
lingered behind at Paris, among the enemies and friends he had left
there. Having obtained a piece of the True Cross from the Célestins at
Avignon, he sent it, with a letter, to Marie de Médicis, by the hands
of his niece, her lady-in-waiting. Enclosed with the treasure was a
confidential letter to Madame de Combalet--one of his three friends
in Marie’s household, the other two being his cousin Charles de la
Meilleraye, captain of the guard, and Denys Bouthillier de Rancé,
private secretary--asking her to beg from Her Majesty the favour of
three lines in her own hand, to be shown to those who made it their
business to inquire if she had written to him. Such lines would be of
more value, he says, than whole sheets from the secretary, “qui est bon
pour d’autres, mais non pour une antienne créature.”
The odd touch of something like sentiment, appealing to the Queen’s
memory, seems to justify what has been said of the great Cardinal--that
he did not understand women. It looks as if he had persuaded himself
that the recent reconciliation would be lasting, that Marie had
forgotten her grudges and might be expected, in his interest, to
silence the curious and the impertinent.
A campaign against Germany and Spain sounded formidable, but in fact
it resolved itself into a duel between Cardinal de Richelieu and the
Duke of Savoy. That cunning old prince did not at once break through
the Treaty of Susa, which bound him to take the French side in case
the Duke of Mantua was again attacked by Spain; but he did his best,
by every device in his power, to hinder the march of the French army.
The danger did indeed become less immediate; plague, fever, and floods
forced Marshal Colalto to retire from Mantua, and M. de Toiras held his
own in Casale. Even before Richelieu had crossed the mountains, the
Pope’s intervention brought about some talk of peace, while Charles
Emmanuel made endless difficulties as to the terms on which the French,
to gain Montferrat, should pass through the territories of Savoy.
But all these delays only made Richelieu more resolute and more
impatient. He descended into Dauphiné, swept an army over the Alps in
terrible weather, and took up his quarters at Susa, still in French
hands. Charles Emmanuel continued the game he was playing with both
sides; the Cardinal soon knew that while negotiating with him as to
joint action against Spain the Duke was in communication with the
Spanish and imperial commanders, was trying to make sure of the passes
behind the French army, and was delaying the supplies purchased with
French gold for Casale. The Duke seemed, in fact, to hold the key of
the situation.
This state of things did not last long. It may be said that when
the Marquis du Chillou exchanged sword for crosier France lost a
great field-marshal; yet it is only partly true. Over and over again
Richelieu the soldier proved himself the match in genius, will, and
spirit of Richelieu the cardinal and statesman. The conqueror of La
Rochelle was now fully equal to the difficult campaign forced upon him
by the disloyal movements of the Duke of Savoy.
Instead of crossing the frontier into Montferrat, to the immediate
relief of Casale, Richelieu marched his 22,000 men on Rivoli, where his
false ally, with his sons and the armed forces of Savoy, lay in wait to
command the French rear. At the news of this advance, Duke and princes,
Savoyards and Piedmontese, fled back pell-mell to Turin.
It was one of the picturesque moments in Richelieu’s life. At the
dawn of a March day, under torrents of rain and hail, he forded the
swollen river Dora at the head of his cavalry. The infantry crossed
by a narrow bridge. Horse and foot were alike in a bad humour, after
many days of forced marches in terrible weather by mountain and plain.
They cursed their leader freely enough as he splashed through the ford
and caracoled on the farther bank, armed to the teeth and escorted by
pages and guards. Little trace of the ecclesiastic in that handsome
general officer, his worn face under a feathered hat, a steel cuirass
on his body, ready to share in all the hardships of his discontented
men. In his _Memoirs_ Richelieu has nothing but good to say of the
soldiers, whose insolence, according to others, vexed him at the time.
“The poor soldiers did their duty gaily,” he writes. But the next day
all grievances were forgotten. In snug quarters at Rivoli, drinking
the Duke of Savoy’s good wine and devouring his stores, the men were
shouting merrily, “Vive le grand Cardinal de Richelieu!”
He was too wise to advance against Spain and Austria, leaving Savoy
and Piedmont to attack him in the rear. His next move really decided
the war. He swept back towards the mountains, took Pinerolo after a
short siege, and seized on several strong frontier places, the gateways
of the Alps between Dauphiné and Piedmont. Once more, as in earlier
centuries, “France held the keys of Italy.”
The war dragged on through the summer; its history must be read
elsewhere. The Court moved to Lyons, and Richelieu met the King at
Grenoble early in May. Together, in a short and easy campaign, they
conquered Savoy. Chambéry opened its gates on May 15.
The extreme unhealthiness of the season--plague raging in Northern
Italy--prevented Louis from personally taking the command of his
Italian army. From St. Jean de Maurienne he and the Cardinal watched
the course of events, while sending the Duc de Montmorency across Mont
Cenis with troops to reinforce the marshals in command at Pinerolo. The
combined armies made fresh conquests and behaved magnificently; but the
great heat and the ravages of disease were enemies as formidable as
Spaniards and Imperialists, who on their side held doggedly to their
objects and gained at least one tremendous success. The storming of
Mantua by the Emperor’s troops on the night of July 17 was a crime
against civilisation. Art treasures never to be replaced were lost and
destroyed in the sack of the old Gonzaga palace on its gleaming lake, a
shrine of Renaissance beauty since the days of Isabella d’Este.
Immediately after this catastrophe Charles Emmanuel of Savoy died of
despair at the loss of his towns and provinces. His son, the husband of
Madame Christine of France, was more alive to the wisdom of an alliance
with Louis XIII. An obstacle was thus removed from the path of the
peace negotiations, which went on in spite of active war all through
the summer and the early autumn; the chief agents in them being Père
Joseph, at the Diet of Ratisbon, and a young Italian diplomat in the
service of the Pope, named Giulio Mazarini.
When, late in October, the war ended with the retirement of the
Austrians and Spaniards, the relief of Casale, and the restoration of
Mantua to Duke Charles, it seemed as if Richelieu’s triumphs abroad and
at home were signal and complete. And yet, at this very time, he was on
the edge of destruction.