Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis de 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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, [Pg 61] 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ She was even prepared for a formal reconciliation with her “antienne créature,” to be sealed by receiving back Madame de Combalet into the service and favour from which she had been dismissed some months before.
But here Marie’s dissembling ended; and on November 9, 1630, with a burst of feminine fury, began that “grand orage de la Cour” which threatened to break Armand de Richelieu in full upward flight: the man already feared by Catholic Europe and the hope of the northern Protestants, with whose new leader, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, his diplomacy was even now allying France. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ A free-spoken Pope is reported to have said on the death of Richelieu, 'If there is a God, the Cardinal will have to smart for what he has done; but if there is no God, he was certainly an excellent man.' Our historian also leaves these delicate questions open. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 situation was serious to the last degree, and Richelieu had to meet it alone. The King was far too ill to hear such news, and his life was more valuable to France than any forts and islands: the Cardinal had to accept a responsibility never yet openly his. Walking gingerly in a crowd of enemies, he had till now sheltered himself under the authority of the King. Now he rose supreme, to give those “prompt and powerful orders” which, as he says, were the only way to face the storm. “A thousand cares tormented and agitated his mind ”

“ That, therefore, I should think it would be more glorious for his Highness, in the view of the world, to support himself by his own weight, that is, by the merit of his virtue, against the artifices of so powerful a minister as the Cardinal de Richelieu,—I say, more glorious to support himself by a wise and regular conduct than to kindle the fire of war, the flagrant consequences whereof no man is able to foresee ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore we now begin to see that, whereas in the Catholic countries the chief ministers of State continue to be cardinals and great men of the Church, in the Protestant countries it is so no longer. The king's ministers are most often laymen.
Richelieu's policy
During part of the Thirty Years' War the great French cardinal, Richelieu, had on his hands a heavy task in suppressing a most formidable rising of the Huguenots, whose greatest strength was in the west. England sent a fleet to their assistance, but it effected little. ”

“ The Pope absolutely refused to confirm Richelieu’s own election as Abbot-General of the Orders of Cîteaux and Prémontré, or to countenance his project of advanced reform in his own Order of Cluny. A private quarrel in Rome made matters worse; one of the French Ambassador’s gentlemen was killed, and the ambassador’s wrath irritated the Pope into forbidding any funeral honours to be paid in Rome to Richelieu’s lieutenant, the soldier-Cardinal de la Valette, [Pg 274] who died at Rivoli in the midst of his Savoyard campaign of 1639. ”

“ With great funeral pomp the Capuchin was borne back to Paris and buried in his convent church in the Rue St. Honoré, where for nearly a hundred and seventy years his stately Latin epitaph, composed by Cardinal de Richelieu, told the world how he had lived in the midst of splendour and riches, austere and poor. His bones lay beside those of the famous Père Ange, Duc de Joyeuse and Marshal of France. ”

“ 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 [Pg 5] 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. ”

“ He recommended to the Cardinal more caution in dealing with powerful men, but would not hear of his retirement from the head of affairs. It would be the ruin of the State, he said. He told him that he had long desired his friendship; that France had never before seen so great or so disinterested a Minister, whose glorious deeds could not be denied, even by his enemies. All this and much more flattery ended in an alliance between the Prince and the Cardinal, which actually lasted their lives. Condé [Pg 170] became a loyal subject of the King and a devoted adherent and admirer of Richelieu. ”

“ Later in the year, the Prince de Condé and the Duc de Montmorency were charged with checking the Duc de Rohan in Languedoc. By that time, Toiras being blockaded by the English in the Isle of Ré, and the attitude of La Rochelle being no longer doubtful, Richelieu had ceased to show patience and toleration of the King’s rebels. The day he had long foreseen had at last arrived. “Faut ruiner les Huguenots. Si Ré se sauve, facile. S’il se perd, plus difficile, mais faisable et nécessaire comme l’unique remède de la perte de Ré. ”

“ His niece, with whom he was on the most intimate, affectionate terms, seems to have been the only woman who really cared for Cardinal de Richelieu. For her he planned various great marriages in France and Lorraine, all of which came to nothing. He gave her the Petit-Luxembourg when he moved to his new palace, but she still overlooked his housekeeping and was the leading figure in his entertainments. Society realized her power, [Pg 242] and treated her with considerable reverence, though it laughed behind her back and told many malicious stories. ”

“ Why hide in the woods when there was so much to be done in the city?—ambassadors sending couriers half over Europe; joyful meetings with Queen Anne, with Monsieur; audiences of great lords and ladies, one by one; all the happy, noisy, popular confusion of a sudden return to power.
Close by, at the Petit-Luxembourg, Richelieu had his moment of despair. To fall from so great a height meant death, at least to all his ambitions; perhaps literally, for his enemies, so many and so strong, would hardly be satisfied with exile. ”

“ Warned by such severities, and impressed by the failure of the English to succour La Rochelle, several of the Huguenot gentlemen of Poitou came into the camp to assure the King of their loyalty. The most distinguished among them, the Duc de la Trémoïlle, listened to the persuasive voice of Père Joseph and became a Catholic, and certain of his friends followed his example—a signal triumph for Richelieu which was not encouraging to the starving heroes of La Rochelle. ”