Page:EB1911 - Volume 10.djvu/858

HISTORY] once more in August 1615; but he was again pacified by the governorships and pensions of the peace of Loudun (May 1616).

But Villeroy and the other ministers knew not how to reap the full advantage of their victory. They had but one desire, to put themselves on a good footing again with Condé, instead of applying themselves honestly to the service of the king. The “marshals,” Concini and his wife

Leonora Galigai, more influential with the queen and more exacting than ever, by dint of clever intrigues forced the ministers to retire one after another; and with the last of Henry IV.’s “greybeards” vanished also all the pecuniary reserves left. Concini surrounded himself with new men, insignificant persons ready to do his bidding, such as Barbin or Mangot, while in the background was Richelieu, bishop of Luçon. Condé now began intrigues with the princes whom he had previously betrayed; but his pride dissolved in piteous entreaties when Thémines, captain of the guard, arrested him in September 1616. Six months later Concini had not even time to protest when another captain, Vitry, slew him at the Louvre, under orders from Louis XIII., on the 24th of April 1617.

Richelieu had appeared behind Marie de’ Medici; Albert de Luynes rose behind Louis XIII., the neglected child whom he had contrived to amuse. “The tavern remained the same, having changed nothing but the bush.” De Luynes was made a duke and marshal in Concini’s place, with no better title; while the duc d’Epernon, supported by the queen-mother (now in disgrace at Blois), took Condé’s place at the head of the opposition. The treaties of Angoulême and Angers (1619–1620), negotiated by Richelieu, recalled the “unwholesome” treaties of Sainte-Menehould and Loudun. The revolt of the Protestants was more serious. Goaded by the vigorous revival of militant Catholicism which marked the opening of the 17th century, de Luynes tried to put a finishing touch to the triumph of Catholicism in France, which he had assisted, by abandoning in the treaty of Ulm the defence of the small German states against the ambition of the ruling house of Austria, and by sacrificing the Protestant Grisons to Spain. The re-establishment of Catholic worship in Béarn was the pretext for a rising among the Protestants, who had remained loyal during these troublous years; and although the military organization of French Protestantism, arranged by the assembly of La Rochelle, had been checked in 1621, by the defection of most of the reformed nobles, like Bouillon and Lesdiguières, de Luynes had to raise the disastrous siege of Montauban. Death alone saved him from the disgrace suffered by his predecessors (December 15, 1621).

From 1621 to 1624 Marie de’ Medici, re-established in credit, prosecuted her intrigues; and in three years there were three different ministries: de Luynes was succeeded by the prince de Condé, whose Montauban was found at Montpellier; the Brûlarts succeeded Condé, and

having, like de Luynes, neglected France’s foreign interests, they had to give place to La Vieuville; while this latter was arrested in his turn for having sacrificed the interests of the English Catholics in the negotiations regarding the marriage of Henrietta of France with the prince of Wales. All these personages were undistinguished figures beyond whom might be discerned the cold clear-cut profile of Marie de’ Medici’s secretary, now a cardinal, who was to take the helm and act as viceroy during eighteen years.

Richelieu came into power at a lucky moment. Every one was sick of government by deputy; they desired a strong hand and an energetic foreign policy, after the defeat of the Czechs at the White Mountain by the house of Austria, the Spanish intrigues in the Valtellina, and

the resumption of war between Spain and Holland. Richelieu contrived to raise hope in the minds of all. As president of the clergy at the states-general of 1614 he had figured as an adherent of Spain and the ultramontane interest; he appeared to be a representative of that religious party which was identical with the Spanish party. But he had also been put into the ministry by the party of the Politiques, who had terminated the civil wars, acclaimed Henry IV., applauded the Protestant alliance, and by the mouth of Miron, president of the third estate, had in 1614 proclaimed its intention to take up the national tradition once more. Despite the concessions necessary at the outset to the partisans of a Catholic alliance, it was the programme of the Politiques that Richelieu adopted and laid down with a master’s hand in his Political Testament.

To realize it he had to maintain his position. This was very difficult with a king who “wished to be governed and yet was impatient at being governed.” Incapable of applying himself to great affairs, but of sane and even acute judgment, Louis XIII. excelled only in a passion for

detail and for manual pastimes. He realized the superior qualities of his minister, though with a lively sense of his own dignity he often wished him more discreet and less imperious; he had confidence in him but did not love him. Cold-hearted and formal by nature, he had not even self-love, detested his wife Anne of Austria—too good a Spaniard—and only attached himself fitfully to his favourites, male or female, who were naturally jealously suspected by the cardinal. He was accustomed to listen to his mother, who detested Richelieu as her ungrateful protégé. Neither did he love his brother, Gaston of Orleans, and the feeling was mutual; for the latter, remaining for twenty years heir-presumptive to a crown which he could neither defend nor seize, posed as the beloved prince in all the conspiracies against Richelieu, and issued from them each time as a Judas. Add to this that Louis XIII., like Richelieu himself, had wretched health, aggravated by the extravagant medicines of the day; and it is easy to understand how this pliable disposition which offered itself to the yoke caused Richelieu always to fear that his king might change his master, and to declare that “the four square feet of the king’s cabinet had been more difficult for him to conquer than all the battlefields of Europe.”

Richelieu, therefore, passed his time in safeguarding himself from his rivals and in spying upon them; his suspicious nature, rendered still more irritable by his painful practice of a dissimulation repugnant to his headstrong character, making him fancy himself threatened more than was actually the case. He brutally suppressed six great plots, several of which were scandalous, and had more than fifty persons executed; and he identified himself with the king, sincerely believing that he was maintaining the royal authority and not merely his own. He had a preference for irregular measures rather than legal prosecutions, and a jealousy of all opinions save his own. He maintained his power through the fear of torture and of special commissions. It was Louis XIII. whose cold decree ordained most of the rigorous sentences, but the stain of blood rested on the cardinal’s robe and made his reasons of state pass for private vengeance. Chalais was beheaded at Nantes in 1626 for having upheld Gaston of Orleans in his refusal to wed Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and Marshal d’Ornano died at Vincennes for having given him bad advice in this matter; while the duellist de Boutteville was put to the torture for having braved the edict against duels. The royal family itself was not free from his attacks; after the Day of Dupes (1630) he allowed the queen-mother to die in exile, and publicly dishonoured the king’s brother Gaston of Orleans by the publication of his confessions; Marshal de Marillac was put to the torture for his ingratitude, and the constable de Montmorency for rebellion (1632). The birth of Louis XIV. in 1638 confirmed Richelieu in power. However, at the point of death he roused himself to order the execution of the king’s favourite, Cinq-Mars, and his friend de Thou, guilty of treason with Spain (1642).

Absolute authority was not in itself sufficient; much money was also needed. In his state-papers Richelieu has shown that at the outset he desired that the Huguenots should share no longer in public affairs, that the nobles should cease to behave as rebellious subjects, and the powerful

provincial governors as suzerains over the lands committed to their charge. With his passion for the uniform and the useful on a grand scale, he hoped by means of the Code