Cardinal de Richelieu

“ 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. ”

“ Cinq-Mars and his friends perished on the scaffold; Anne of Austria was again humbled; and every enemy of the cardinal shrunk in awe and submission before his ascendancy. Among them was the king himself, whom Richelieu looked upon as an equal in dignity, an inferior in mind and in power. The guards of the cardinal were as numerous as the monarch's, and independent of any authority save that of their immediate master. A treaty was even drawn up between king and minister, as between two potentates. But the power and the pride of Richelieu reached at once their height and their termination. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Marquis de Rambouillet has been already mentioned as a steady friend of Cardinal de Richelieu, and though His Eminence was not to be seen at Madame de Rambouillet’s assemblies—the centre of civilising influence long before his noonday of power—he took a keen and partly sympathetic interest in all that went on there. His brilliant intelligence could not fail to recognise the great work done for society by “the divine Arthénice” in her blue drawing-room, where savage manners were softened and refined, military roughness was smoothed, coarse gossip discouraged ”

“ Of the cardinal there remains nothing but the great memory of his power and of the services he rendered his country. Evil has been spoken, with good reason, of glory; it lasts, however, more durably than material successes even when they rest on the best security. Richelieu had no conception of that noblest ambition on which a human soul can feed, that of governing a free country, but he was one of the greatest, the most effective, and the boldest, as well as the most prudent servants that France ever had. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In Richelieu’s own mind his worst enemies were to be found among his nearest neighbours. “Les intrigues de cabinet,” says M. de Montglat, “donnèrent plus de peine au Cardinal de Richelieu que toute la guerre étrangère.” Not only mischievous great ladies like the Duchesse de Chevreuse, but every man or woman who had anything to do with the Court, were objects of his watchful suspicion, and to most of them, while they begged his favour and flocked to his entertainments, he seemed the cruel ogre, the mysterious sphinx, so long represented in history. ”

“ The idea was not unwelcome to Cardinal de Richelieu. The Court was full of his spies, who warned him that Mademoiselle de la Fayette’s intimate talk with the King was not to his advantage; that she was inspired by Père Caussin, the royal confessor, to speak to Louis in favour of his mother, his wife, his brother, and all the other [Pg 266] victims of a warlike, heretical policy; that she was encouraged by her uncle the Bishop of Limoges and her brother the Chevalier de la Fayette, to set him against the Cardinal ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All seemed promising for the conspirators, [Pg 228] the illness of the cardinal, in their opinion, being likely to carry him off in no long period, and meanwhile preventing him from discovering the plot and setting himself right with the king.
Evidently these hopeful people did not know the resources of Cardinal Richelieu. In all his severe illness his eyes had not been blind, his intellect not at rest. Keen as they thought themselves, they had a man with double their resources to deal with. ”

“ Encouraged by France, she claimed and seized her independence, recalled her old royal family of Braganza to the throne, and added one more to the active allies of Richelieu.
The tragic end of the Comte de Soissons was a more personal triumph for the Cardinal. Monsieur le Comte had spent his time at Sedan in weaving plots with the Duc de Bouillon and the wild Archbishop of Rheims, now Duc de Guise, while waiting for some turn of events that might restore his fortunes. In the summer of 1641 Richelieu decided to break up this nest of conspirators. ”

“ Any ordinary conveyance was impossible for the Cardinal’s pain-racked body. He travelled in his bed, carried by eighteen men in an immense litter hung with crimson and gold. So large, we are told, was the “machine,” that gateways had to be widened, doors and windows taken out, walls pulled down, at the many stopping-places on His Eminence’s journey. He was overtaken by bad news: the Maréchal de Guiche had been defeated by the Spaniards near Cambray, and for a few days there was great alarm in the north of France, with new outcries against the Cardinal ”

“ 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. ”

“ Richelieu strode towards his public objects with a footstep unswervingly firm, though his servants found it the easiest thing in the world to put him into a passion. Sometimes they did so on purpose, pleased to be scolded unjustly, because sure of some handsome amends. And in treating of self-control, I am contented to take that same Richelieu, the Cardinal, as an illustration of the various and expansive meaning which I give to the phrase. Richelieu did not command his temper in the sphere of his private household: he commanded it to perfection in his administration of a kingdom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ The Cardinal shrank from nothing. Many of the details of his projected work were never carried out, and it has been well said that he was a more successful statesman abroad than at home, where a mass of privileges and vested interests, with the growing necessity for heavy taxes, were millstones hung round a financial reformer’s neck. Richelieu’s success in crushing the great nobles brought no benefit to the common people; it was all for the advantage of the King. Among his early dreams were those of encouraging agriculture and manufactures after the example of Henry IV. and Sully ”

“ 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 ”

“ Held by his own strong influence, all was well, but Louis was too nervous to endure such scenes as those of the last few days, if by any possible sacrifice he could end them. Richelieu might be the victim of the King’s hatred of worry as much as of the Queen-mother’s hatred of himself.
Several far-seeing men had the courage to separate themselves from the crowd pressing to the greater Luxembourg. One of these was the Cardinal de la Valette, the ugly, generous, soldierly second son of the Duc d’Épernon ”

“ 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 ”