Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/604

 568 FRANCE [HISTORY. 1623-24, Riche lieu begins to rule. His policy. His earlier history. Periods of his career. nothing but weakness; their chief men submitted, and place after place fell. After this war had lasted about a year, the queen-mother got the upper hand at court, and Conde had to withdraw ; by a treaty which recalled the old peaces of the civil wars, the chief part of the Edict of Nantes was confirmed, while the Huguenots were forbidden to hold political meetings or to fortify towns ; they retained only La Rochelle and Montauban as strongholds (October 1623). Pdchelieu, who in 1622 had received the cardinal s hat in reward of his services in reconciling the king with his mother, was now ready to take charge of and to rule the weak, unstable king, who already appeared to fear and dis like his future master. He entered the council in April 1624. &quot;I venture on nothing without first thinking it out ; but once decided, I go straight to my point, overthrow or cut down whatever stands in my way, and finally cover it all up with my cardinal s red robe.&quot; Such are the words put into Richelieu s mouth ; and whether he said them or not, they represent fairly enough his deliberation, resolution, and cold severity. Nor does the final touch as to the red robe of his clerical office go much beyond the truth ; for he made great use of his dignity as a cardinal to cover the intrigues ixnd cruelties on which otherwise he might perhaps have never ventured. In his earlier days he seems to have desired to build up a strong monarchy, absolute, without constitutional checks, on the goodwill of a satisfied and well- governed people. The alliance between despotism and de mocracy, which our own age has also seen, appeared to be especially adapted for France, where the constitutional life was always so weak. As soon, however, as the despotism was established on a firm footing, the people were forgotten ; and Richelieu s administration in the end oppressed them quite as much as it crushed the nobles or kept the church in order. When Richelieu entered the king s council in 1624 he was thirty-nine years old. Born in 1585, he was the youngest son of a noble family of Poitou, springing origin ally from the village of Richelieu. In that family the elder son, if he chose, took orders, because they could always dis pose of the bishopric of Lucon, a kind of family benefice ; the younger son became a soldier. As such, Armand du Plessis learnt lessons in warfare, which were very useful to him at a later time ; tho cardinal s robe did not take the place of the soldier s coat, it only concealed it. When, how ever, his brother gave up his preferment at Lu9on, Armand at once left the calling of a soldier, was ordained, and suc ceeded to the bishopric in 1607, at the age of twenty-two. The States-General of 1614 made the young prelate s for tune; he pleased Concini and the queen-mother, acted with consummate skill and prudence through the ten years which followed, was made cardinal iu 1622, and member of the council in 1624. His later life may be divided into four periods: (1) from 1624 to 1626, the time of his first resist ance against the Austro-Spanish power and his failure, as shown by tho peace of Monzon ; (2) from 1626 to 1628, when he punished the Huguenots of La Rochelle for that failure, and laid firmer foundations for his after-success ; (3) from 1628 to 1635, the period in which he secured his own and his master s despotism in France, and began to interfere iu the affairs of Europe ; and lastly (4), from 1635 to 1643, the days of his successful lead in the arena of general politics, and of his triumphant overthrow of his domestic foes ; the fruits of this period he left for Mazarin to gather in abroad by his triumphs at the peace of West phalia ; Louis XIV. carried out his principles to their utmost development in domestic policy. 1. When he began to rule iu 1624, tho Austro-Spanish power had already become very strong. The first results of the Thirty Years War were all in their favour ; they held the Palatinate and the course of the Rhine, by which they 162 * could communicate with the Spanish Netherlands and iuti- Firs midate the Dutch ; they were also masters of the important peri Valtelline, that long pass which led from the Milanese ofl territory, at this time in their hands, to their German ^ friends in Bavaria and Tyrol. Richelieu determined to attack them both in Germany and in the Italian Alps, in Germany by supporting the leadership of Christian IV. of Denmark, though he would have much preferred that of Gustavus Adolphus ; in the Alps by allying himself with Charles Emmanuel, duke of Savoy, with Venice, and with the Grison leagues. With hardly any resistance he swept the Spanish and papal troops out of the Valtelline ; for Urban VIII. was only half-hearted on the side of Spain, and was to some extent influenced by the true winner of some of Richelieu s greatest triumphs, the crafty capuchin, Father Joseph. Just, however, as all was going on well, Richelieu was paralysed by an unlucky outburst of Hugue not independence ; affairs in Germany took a bad turn, for Wallenstein now appears on the scene with a new imperial army ; the attack of the duke of Savoy on Genoa failed ; the French in Piedmont and the Valtelline felt themselves insecure. A temporary peace was made with the Hugue nots, and in May 1626 the treaty of Monzon with Spain Th closed Richelieu s first attempt to reduce the preponderance tre of of that power. It is perhaps the darkest hour of his career ; MB&amp;gt; the treaty was secretly and treacherously agreed on ; he left his allies to shift for themselves ; he seemed to reverse his whole policy. The truth was that the strength of the Spanish party at home, the ill-success of the Lutherans in Germany, and the weakening effect of Huguenot insurrec tion made it impossible for him to persevere. 2. It was clear that he must bridle the Rochelle Protest- Se^-i ants before he could advance a step ; so doing, he would pe 1 c also make a beginning in his second aim, that of bringing of down the noblesse, for some of the proudest aristocrats of France were Huguenots ; then he could coerce the queen- mother and her party, with its Spanish leanings ; and after that he would be free to resume his foreign policy. This second period of his public career, therefore, is chiefly occu pied with the overthrow of the Huguenot power, which was concentrated at La Rochelle. It was, however, preceded by a great court intrigue, for he was already very obnoxious to the nobles near the throne, and to the princes of the blood. The plot was easily detected and crushed; Marshal Ornano perished in prison ; Gaston of Orleans, the king s dissolute younger brother, was compelled to make abject submission ; the duke of Vendome lost his government of Brittany ; the duchess of Chevreuse was banished ; the queen herself was warned to behave more wisely in the future. The influence of women during this century is almost uniformly baleful; that of Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII. and wife of Charles I., led to the attempt of Buckingham to recover his popularity in England by espousing the Huguenot cause, which was exciting a warm interest in the English people. The Huguenots, irritated by the establishment of Fort Louis as a check on La Rochelle, declared war on France herself; they were secretly encouraged by Anne of Austria and the court party, as well as by the Spaniards, who were delighted to see the cardinal thwarted and France weakened by civil war. They were also openly backed by England, which declared war on France, and sent a strong fleet under Buckingham to succour La Rochelle. But there was in light-headed hand some Buckingham nothing of the soldier ; he failed igno- miniously, while the cardinal s siege grew daily stricter and more certain of success. After fourteen perilous months of siege, Richelieu entered the town in triumph. With the fall of La Rochello ends the stubborn resistance of the Huguenots to the monarchy ; the siege was a kind of after-