Eleanor C. Price

“ The Court was buzzing with intrigues all through 1636, the “year of Corbie,” while the King still enjoyed, as far as possible, the society of the only woman who had ever loved him for his own sake. Mademoiselle de la Fayette, torn between conscience and affection, was dragged one way and the other by two sets of advisers, each headed by a dignified ecclesiastic moved by reasons beyond mere anxiety for her welfare and that of the King. The Père Carré, Superior of the Dominicans in Paris and a favourite director of Court ladies, was one of Richelieu’s chief spies and most devoted servants. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the Duc de Vendôme—the “César-Monsieur” flattered and feared by Henry IV.’s Court—had been a man of character to match his position, no one of the great nobles could have equalled him in power and popularity. Even as a vain and vicious coward, few men in the kingdom were more dangerous to Richelieu’s plans and Louis XIII.’s government. From his province of Brittany, the Duke had watched the failure of the great conspiracy in which he and his brother were deeply engaged. They feared, and with reason, that their own ruin would follow that of the Maréchal d’Ornano. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus the interior peace of France was largely in the hands of the brothers Rohan, of whom the younger was a firebrand, an adventurer, never happy unless employed in some foolhardy enterprise, though capable, on occasion, of running away; one of those restless spirits to whom religion meant opposition to law and authority; the very type of the fighting Huguenot, robber on land and pirate by sea. Such men, to whom nothing was sacred, were indeed to be found under both religious banners, one and all the opponents of royalty and of Richelieu. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The white robe of innocence did not long suit the Duchesse de Rohan, and never had a good man a worse wife. Very pretty, attractive and clever, she led a life worthier of the Valois Court than of the fine old Huguenot houses of Sully and Rohan. Not even Madame de Chevreuse, herself a Rohan by birth, was more free of moral restraint. The Duc de Rohan, concerned with greater matters, seemed superbly unconscious of his wife’s love-affairs, and turned away coolly from the shocked pastors who tried to enlighten him. ”

“ François du Tremblay, the monk, was the more imaginative, the more enthusiastic, and the less human of the two. He was not, like Richelieu, personally ambitious, and he lived the simple life of a friar, while his keen cleverness and ready, fearless resource made him the first of diplomatists. If he was eager for the Cardinal’s Hat steadily refused by Pope Urban VIII., it was because of the advantages this honour would have brought to his beloved Capuchin Order. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the play was over, and the Queen had passed on a golden bridge drawn by peacocks to a silver throne prepared for her beyond the lifted curtain of the stage, to preside over a grand ball that ended the evening, there was no prouder man in Europe than her host—the weary, sickly statesman who had already given provinces to France and made her paramount in Italy and Spain. ”

“ Though he would not save the victims, saying that it was a question which throat should be cut—that of the duel or that of the law; though he listened unmoved to the prayers of their friends and relations—the Princesse de Condé and the Duc de Montmorency were Bouteville’s cousins, for the best blood of France ran in his veins—yet the words with which, in his Memoirs, he mourns the two young men, have a ring of sincerity. Famous for courage in their lives, it did not fail them, he says, at the approach of a disgraceful death. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The three Estates of the realm had each its own separate point of view. The princes and nobles loved war; but the majority, Catholic and hating Richelieu, were rebels at heart. However, each man had his orders: content or malcontent, each governor found himself dispatched to his own province, each commander to his post, while generals dashed hither and thither in pursuit of armies which had to be hired, recruited, disciplined, poured in half-a-dozen directions over the frontier—Germany, Flanders, Lorraine, Switzerland, Italy. ”

“ Each day of that winter and spring brought fresh and painful experience to Marie de Médicis. She saw herself checked in every direction by an enemy who worked with extraordinary prudence, keeping all the outward forms of due respect while he lured her gradually to ruin. No doubt her presence in Paris, her atmosphere of plot and intrigue, was dangerous to him, if not to the State. The question was, how to remove her from the centre of things without a public scandal.
In February the Court went to Compiègne for hunting, and to spend the Carnival. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the Queen’s very household he had a spy, long unsuspected and exceedingly clever at her odious trade, Mademoiselle de Chémerault, a young maid-of-honour, an intimate friend of Madame de Hautefort. From the most private interior of the Court, this girl reported every word and deed to a Madame Maline, who conveyed the information direct to Richelieu in letters which still exist, a mine of ancient gossip written in the curious jargon used by him in his secret notes. Everybody has a nickname: the Cardinal himself, in these notes, is sometimes Amadeo, sometimes l’Oracle ”

“ It seemed that Richelieu had little now to fear from open enemies at home, though the secret dread of assassination clung about him with reason to his life’s end. He had already shown a certain sense of security by acts of indulgence or of conciliation: the Duc de Vendôme had been set at liberty and the Duchesse de Chevreuse had been allowed to return to the Court, while her husband was made governor of Picardy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 79] 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 ”

“ Rooms, halls, staircases, galleries, cabinets, were a blaze of colour; there were ceilings all gold, with allegorical pictures in mosaic, to the Cardinal’s glory. The walls were hung with pictures by the greatest artists, French and Italian; there was a gallery of famous men, some of the portraits painted by Philippe de Champagne, others by Simon Vouet. The furniture throughout was magnificent, and the art treasures of every kind represented the work of collectors all over Europe. The gardens, in those early days, were charming in their formal beauty ”

“ 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. ”

“ His escape after the Fleury affair had been narrow enough, and he had then solemnly promised loyalty to the Cardinal, even undertaking to act as his spy, informing him of any evil counsels that might reach Monsieur. But Chalais was not his own master. Madame de Chevreuse drove him into a path where there was no more turning back, and after the arrest of the Vendôme princes he became the active agent and cat’s-paw of a new combination of old rebel forces which swiftly dragged Monsieur into its centre, his vows of loyalty hardly spoken and the ink of his signature not yet dry. ”

“ Terrified by so sharp an object-lesson, Gaston d’Orléans made one more dash across France and again took refuge at Brussels. This was a consequence not at all intended by Cardinal de Richelieu.
Worry and strain, political anxieties constantly fresh, the knowledge that he was furiously hated by society, that dozens of desperate men had vowed to kill him, and were watching for their opportunity—a strong man would have felt the burden, and Richelieu, whatever the power of his spirit, was always delicate and frail of body. ”

“ Whether the fatal atmosphere of the dungeons of Vincennes was assisted by poison of a more active kind, will never be known. That suspicion hung about the deaths of many of the Cardinal’s prisoners. Richelieu consoled the young widow of Puylaurens by marrying her to the Comte d’Harcourt, of the House of Lorraine, younger brother of the Duc d’Elbeuf, a queer personage, but a fine soldier. He had fought a successful duel with Bouteville, in itself a distinction. He proved himself worthy of the Cardinal’s favour by serving His Eminence faithfully for the rest of his life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These liberties Richelieu was resolved that they should no longer enjoy. And except for the support of the King and of his few trusted lieutenants, he was almost alone in that resolution. The nobles of France, even the commanders of the army, saw very well that the entire conquest of the Huguenots was a long step towards their own impotence under an absolute King and a strong Minister. Even the gay soldier Bassompierre said half seriously, “We shall be fools enough to take La Rochelle!” Such opinions, of which he was well aware, did not give the Cardinal a moment’s pause. ”