Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 by Various

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But, just at this moment, when a better day seemed to dawn, came an
event which threw France back into anarchy, and Richelieu out into the
world again.

The young King, Louis XIII., was now sixteen years old. His mother the
Regent and her favorite Concini had carefully kept him down. Under their
treatment he had grown morose and seemingly stupid; but he had wit
enough to understand the policy of his mother and Concini, and strength
enough to hate them for it.

The only human being to whom Louis showed any love was a young falconer,
Albert de Luynes,--and with De Luynes he conspired against his mother's
power and her favorite's life. On an April morning, 1617, the King and
De Luynes sent a party of chosen men to seize Concini. They met him at
the gate of the Louvre. As usual, he is bird-like in his utterance,
snake-like in his bearing. They order him to surrender; he chirps forth
his surprise,--and they blow out his brains. Louis, understanding the
noise, puts on his sword, appears on the balcony of the palace, is
saluted with hurrahs, and becomes master of his kingdom.

Straightway measures are taken against all supposed to be attached
to the Regency. Concini's wife, the favorite Leonora, is burned as a
witch,--Regent Mary is sent to Blois,--Richelieu is banished to his
bishopric.

And now matters went from bad to worse. King Louis was no stronger
than Regent Mary had been,--King's favorite Luynes was no better than
Regent's favorite Concini had been. The nobles rebelled against the new
rule, as they had rebelled against the old. The King went through the
same old extortions and humiliations.

Then came also to full development yet another vast evil. As far back
as the year after Henry's assassination, the Protestants, in terror of
their enemies, now that Henry was gone and the Spaniards seemed to grow
in favor, formed themselves into a great republican league,--a State
within the State,--regularly organised in peace for political effort,
and in war for military effort,--with a Protestant clerical caste which
ruled always with pride, and often with menace.

Against such a theocratic republic war must come sooner or later, and in
1617 the struggle began. Army was pitted against army,--Protestant Duke
of Rohan against Catholic Duke of Luynes. Meanwhile Austria and the
foreign enemies of France, Conde and the domestic enemies of France,
fished in the troubled waters, and made rich gains every day. So France
plunged into sorrows ever deeper and blacker. But in 1624, Mary
de Medici, having been reconciled to her son, urged him to recall
Richelieu.

The dislike which Louis bore Richelieu was strong, but the dislike he
bore toward compromises had become stronger. Into his poor brain, at
last, began to gleam the truth, that a serf-mastering caste, after a
compromise, only whines more steadily and snarls more loudly,--that, at
last, compromising becomes worse than fighting. Richelieu was called and
set at work.

Fortunately for our studies of the great statesman's policy, he left at
his death a "Political Testament" which floods with light his steadiest
aims and boldest acts. In that Testament he wrote this message:--

"When Your Majesty resolved to give
me entrance into your councils and a
great share of your confidence, I can declare
with truth that the Huguenots divided
the authority with Your Majesty, that
the great nobles acted not at all as subjects,
that the governors of provinces took
on themselves the airs of sovereigns, and
that the foreign alliances of France were
despised. I promised Your Majesty to
use all my industry, and all the authority
you gave me, to ruin the Huguenot party,
to abase the pride of the high nobles,
and to raise your name among foreign
nations to the place where it ought to
be."

Such were the plans of Richelieu at the outset. Let us see how he
wrought out their fulfilment.

First of all, he performed daring surgery and cautery about the very
heart of the Court. In a short time he had cut out from that living
centre of French power a number of unworthy ministers and favorites, and
replaced them by men, on whom he could rely.

Then he began his vast work. His policy embraced three great objects:
First, the overthrow of the Huguenot power; secondly, the subjugation
of the great nobles; thirdly, the destruction of the undue might of
Austria.

First, then, after some preliminary negotiations with foreign
powers,--to be studied hereafter,--he attacked the great
politico-religious party of the Huguenots.

These held, as their great centre and stronghold, the famous seaport of
La Rochelle. He who but glances at the map shall see how strong was this
position: he shall see two islands lying just off the west coast at that
point, controlled by La Rochelle, yet affording to any foreign allies
whom the Huguenots might admit there facilities for stinging France
during centuries. The position of the Huguenots seemed impregnable. The
city was well fortressed,--garrisoned by the bravest of men,--mistress
of a noble harbor open at all times to supplies from foreign ports,--and
in that harbor rode a fleet, belonging to the city, greater than the
navy of France.

Richelieu saw well that here was the head of the rebellion. Here, then,
he must strike it.

Strange as it may seem, his diplomacy was so skillful that he obtained
ships to attack Protestants in La Rochelle from the two great Protestant
powers,--England and Holland. With these he was successful. He attacked
the city fleet, ruined it, and cleared the harbor.

But now came a terrible check. Richelieu had aroused the hate of that
incarnation of all that was and Is offensive in English politics,--the
Duke of Buckingham. Scandal-mongers were wont to say that both were in
love with the Queen,--and that the Cardinal, though unsuccessful in his
suit, outwitted the Duke and sent him out of the kingdom,--and that the
Duke swore a great oath, that, if he could not enter France in one way,
he would enter in another,--and that he brought about a war, and came
himself as a commander: of this scandal believe what you will. But, be
the causes what they may, the English policy changed, and Charles I.
sent Buckingham with ninety ships to aid La Rochelle.

But Buckingham was flippant and careless; Richelieu, careful when there
was need, and daring when there was need. Buckingham's heavy blows
were foiled by Richelieu's keen thrusts, and then, in his confusion,
Buckingham blundered so foolishly, and Richelieu profited by his
blunders so shrewdly, that the fleet returned to England without any
accomplishment of its purpose. The English were also driven from that
vexing position in the Isle of Rhe.

Having thus sent the English home, for a time at least, he led king and
nobles and armies to La Rochelle, and commenced the siege in full force.
Difficulties met him at every turn; but the worst difficulty of all was
that arising from the spirit of the nobility.

No one could charge the nobles of France with lack of bravery. The only
charge was, that their bravery was almost sure to shun every useful
form, and to take every noxious form. The bravery which finds outlet
in duels they showed constantly; the bravery which finds outlet in
street-fights they had shown from the days when the Duke of Orleans
perished in a brawl to the days when the _"Mignons"_ of Henry III.
fought at sight every noble whose beard was not cut to suit them. The
pride fostered by lording it over serfs, in the country, and by lording
it over men who did not own serfs, in the capital, aroused bravery of
this sort and plenty of it. But that bravery which serves a great, good
cause, which must be backed by steadiness and watchfulness, was not so
plentiful. So Richelieu found that the nobles who had conducted the
siege before he took command had, through their brawling propensities
and lazy propensities, allowed the besieged to garner in the crops from
the surrounding country, and to master all the best points of attack.

But Richelieu pressed on. First he built an immense wall and earthwork,
nine miles long, surrounding the city, and, to protect this, he raised
eleven great forts and eighteen redoubts.

Still the harbor was open, and into this the English fleet might return
and succor the city at any time. His plan was soon made. In the midst of
that great harbor of La Rochelle he sank sixty hulks of vessels filled
with stone; then, across the harbor,--nearly a mile wide, and, in
places, more than eight hundred feet deep,--he began building over these
sunken ships a great dike and wall,--thoroughly fortified, carefully
engineered, faced with sloping layers of hewn stone. His own men scolded
at the magnitude of the work,--the men in La Rochelle laughed at
it. Worse than that, the Ocean sometimes laughed and scolded at it.
Sometimes the waves sweeping in from that fierce Bay of Biscay destroyed
in an hour the work of a week. The carelessness of a subordinate once
destroyed in a moment the work of three months.

Yet it is but fair to admit that there was one storm which did not beat
against Richelieu's dike. There set in against it no storm of hypocrisy
from neighboring nations. Keen works for and against Richelieu were put
forth in his day,--works calm and strong for and against him have been
issuing from the presses of France and England and Germany ever since;
but not one of the old school of keen writers or of the new school of
calm writers is known to have ever hinted that this complete sealing of
the only entrance to a leading European harbor was unjust to the world
at large or unfair to the besieged themselves.

But all other obstacles Richelieu had to break through or cut through
constantly. He was his own engineer, general, admiral, prime-minister.
While he urged on the army to work upon the dike, he organized a French
navy, and in due time brought it around to that coast and anchored it so
as to guard the dike and to be guarded by it.

Yet, daring as all this work was, it was but the smallest part of his
work. Richelieu found that his officers were cheating his soldiers
in their pay and disheartening them; in face of the enemy he had to
reorganize the army and to create a new military system. He made the
army twice as effective and supported it at two-thirds less cost than
before. It was his boast in his "Testament," that, from a mob, the
army became "like a well-ordered convent." He found also that his
subordinates were plundering the surrounding country, and thus rendering
it disaffected; he at once ordered that what had been taken should be
paid for, and that persons trespassing thereafter should be severely
punished. He found also the great nobles who commanded in the army
half-hearted and almost traitorous from sympathy with those of their own
caste on the other side of the walls of La Rochelle, and from their fear
of his increased power, should he gain a victory. It was their common
saying, that they were fools to help him do it. But he saw the true
point at once--He placed in the most responsible positions of his army
men who felt for his cause, whose hearts and souls were in it,--men not
of the Dalgetty stamp, but of the Cromwell stamp. He found also, as he
afterward said, that he had to conquer not only the Kings of England and
Spain, but also the King of France. At the most critical moment of the
siege Louis deserted him,--went back to Paris,--allowed courtiers to
fill him with suspicions. Not only Richelieu's place, but his life,
was in danger, and he well knew it; yet he never left his dike and
siege-works, but wrought on steadily until they were done; and then the
King, of his own will, in very shame, broke away from his courtiers, and
went back to his master.

And now a Royal Herald summoned the people of La Rochelle to surrender.
But they were not yet half conquered. Even when they had seen two
English fleets, sent to aid them, driven back from Richelieu's dike,
they still held out manfully. The Duchess of Rohan, the Mayor Guiton,
and the Minister Salbert, by noble sacrifices and burning words, kept
the will of the besieged firm as steel. They were reduced to feed on
their horses,--then on bits of filthy shell-fish,--then on stewed
leather. They died in multitudes.

Guiton the Mayor kept a dagger on the city council-table to stab any man
who should speak of surrender; some who spoke of yielding he ordered
to execution as seditious. When a friend showed him a person dying of
hunger, be said, "Does that astonish you? Both you and I must come to
that." When another told him that multitudes were perishing, he said,
"Provided one remains to hold the city-gate, I ask nothing more."

But at last even Guiton had to yield. After the siege had lasted more
than a year, after five thousand were found remaining out of fifteen
thousand, after a mother had been seen to feed her child with her own
blood, the Cardinal's policy became too strong for him. The people
yielded, and Richelieu entered the city as master.

And now the victorious statesman showed a greatness of soul to which all
the rest of his life was as nothing. He was a Catholic cardinal,--the
Rochellois were Protestants; he was a stern ruler,--they were
rebellious subjects who had long worried and almost impoverished
him;--all Europe, therefore, looked for a retribution more terrible than
any in history.

Richelieu allowed nothing of the sort. He destroyed the old franchises
of the city, for they were incompatible with that royal authority
which he so earnestly strove to build. But this was all. He took no
vengeance,--he allowed the Protestants to worship as before,--he took
many of them into the public service,--and to Guiton he showed marks of
respect. He stretched forth that strong arm of his over the city, and
warded off all harm. He kept back greedy soldiers from pillage,--he kept
back bigot priests from persecution. Years before this he had said, "The
diversity of religions may indeed create a division in the other world,
but not in this"; at another time he wrote, "Violent remedies only
aggravate spiritual diseases." And he was now so tested, that these
expressions were found to embody not merely an idea, but a belief. For,
when the Protestants in La Rochelle, though thug owing tolerance
and even existence to a Catholic, vexed Catholics in a spirit most
intolerant, even that could not force him to abridge the religious
liberties he had given.

He saw beyond his time,--not only beyond Catholics, but beyond
Protestants. Two years after that great example of toleration in La
Rochelle, Nicholas Antoine w as executed for apostasy from Calvinism at
Geneva. And for his leniency Richelieu received the titles of Pope of
the Protestants and Patriarch of the Atheists. But he had gained the
first great object of his policy, and he would not abuse it: he had
crushed the political power of the Huguenots forever.

Let us turn now to the second great object of his policy. He must break
the power of the nobility: on that condition alone could France have
strength and order, and here he showed his daring at the outset. "It is
iniquitous," he was wont to tell the King, "to try to make an example by
punishing the lesser offenders: they are but trees which cast no shade:
it is the great nobles who must be disciplined."

It was not long before he had to begin this work,--and with
the highest,--with no less a personage than Gaston, Duke of
Orleans,--favorite son of Mary,--brother of the King. He who thinks
shall come to a higher idea of Richelieu's boldness, when he remembers
that for many years after this Louis was childless and sickly, and
that during all those years Richelieu might awake any morning to find
Gaston--King.

In 1626, Gaston, with the Duke of Vendome, half-brother of the King, the
Duchess of Chevreuse, confidential friend of the Queen, the Count
of Soissons, the Count of Chalais, and the Marshal Ornano, formed a
conspiracy after the old fashion. Richelieu had his hand at their lofty
throats in a moment. Gaston, who was used only as a makeweight, he
forced into the most humble apologies and the most binding pledges;
Ornano he sent to die in the Bastille; the Duke of Vendome and the
Duchess of Chevreuse he banished; Chalais he sent to the scaffold.

The next year he gave the grandees another lesson. The serf-owning
spirit had fostered in France, through many years, a rage for duelling.
Richelieu determined that this should stop. He gave notice that the law
against duelling was revived, and that he would enforce it. It was
soon broken by two of the loftiest nobles in France,--by the Count of
Bouteville-Montmorency and the Count des Chapelles. They laughed at the
law: they fought defiantly in broad daylight. Nobody dreamed that the
law would be carried out against _them_. The Cardinal would, they
thought, deal with them as rulers have dealt with serf-mastering
law-breakers from those days to these,--invent some quibble and screen
them with it. But his method was sharper and shorter. He seized both,
and executed both on the Place de Greve,--the place of execution for the
vilest malefactors.

No doubt, that, under the present domineering of the pettifogger caste,
there are hosts of men whose minds run in such small old grooves that
they hold legal forms not a means, but an end: these will cry out
against this proceeding as tyrannical. No doubt, too, that, under the
present palaver of the "sensationist" caste, the old ladies of both
sexes have come to regard crime as mere misfortune: these will lament
this proceeding as cruel. But, for this act, if for no other, an earnest
man's heart ought in these times to warm toward the great statesman. The
man had a spine. To his mind crime was cot mere misfortune: crime was
CRIME. Crime was strong; it would pay him well to screen it; it might
cost him dear to fight it. But he was not a modern "smart" lawyer, to
seek popularity by screening criminals,--nor a modern soft juryman,
to suffer his eyes to be blinded by quirks and quibbles to the great
purposes of law,--nor a modern bland governor, who lets a murderer loose
out of politeness to the murderer's mistress. He hated crime; he whipped
the criminal; no petty forms and no petty men of forms could stand
between him and a rascal. He had the sense to see that this course was
not cruel, but merciful. See that for yourselves. In the eighteen years
before Richelieu's administration, four thousand men perished in duels;
in the ten years after Richelieu's death, nearly a thousand thus
perished; but during his whole administration, duelling was checked
completely. Which policy was tyrannical? which policy was cruel?

The hatred of the serf-mastering caste toward their new ruler grew
blacker and blacker; but he never flinched. The two brothers Marillac,
proud of birth, high in office, endeavored to stir revolt as in their
good days of old. The first, who was Keeper of the Seals, Richelieu
threw into prison; with the second, who was a Marshal of France,
Richelieu took another course. For this Marshal had added to revolt
things more vile and more insidiously hurtful: he had defrauded the
Government in army-contracts. Richelieu tore him from his army and
put him on trial. The Queen-Mother, whose pet he was, insisted on his
liberation. Marillac himself blubbered, that it "was all about a little
straw and hay, a matter for which a master would not whip a lackey."
Marshal Marillac was executed. So, when statesmen rule, fare all who
take advantage of the agonies of a nation to pilfer a nation's treasure.

To crown all, the Queen-Mother began now to plot against Richelieu,
because he would not be her puppet,--and he banished her from France
forever.

The high nobles were now exasperate. Gaston tied the country, first
issuing against Richelieu a threatening manifesto. Now awoke the Duke
of Montmorency. By birth he stood next the King's family: by office, as
Constable of France, he stood next the King himself. Montmorency was
defeated and taken. The nobles supplicated for him lustily: they looked
on crimes of nobles resulting in deaths of plebeians as lightly as the
English House of Lords afterward looked on Lord Mohun's murder of Will
Mountfort, or as another body of lords looked on Matt Ward's murder of
Professor Butler: but Montmorency was executed. Says Richelieu, in his
Memoirs, "Many murmured at this act, and called it severe; but others,
more wise, praised the justice of the King, _who preferred the good of
the State to the vain reputation of a hurtful clemency._"

Nor did the great minister grow indolent as he grew old. The Duke of
Epernon, who seems to have had more direct power of the old feudal sort
than any other man in France, and who had been so turbulent under the
Regency,--him Richelieu humbled completely. The Duke of La Valette
disobeyed orders in the army, and he was executed as a common soldier
would have been for the same offence. The Count of Soissons tried to see
if he could not revive the good old turbulent times, and raised a rebel
army; but Richelieu hunted him down like a wild beast. Then certain
Court nobles,--pets of the King,--Cinq-Mars and De Thou, wove a new
plot, and, to strengthen it, made a secret treaty with Spain; but the
Cardinal, though dying, obtained a copy of the treaty, through his
agent, and the traitors expiated their treason with their blood.

But this was not all. The Parliament of Paris,--a court of
justice,--filled with the idea that law is not a means, but an end,
tried to interpose _forms_ between the Master of France and the vermin
he was exterminating. That Parisian court might, years before, have done
something. They might have insisted that petty quibbles set forth by the
lawyers of Paris should not defeat the eternal laws of retribution set
forth by the Lawgiver of the Universe. That they had not done, and the
time for legal forms had gone by. The Paris Parliament would not see
this, and Richelieu crushed the Parliament. Then the Court of Aids
refused to grant supplies, and he crushed that court. In all this the
nation braced him. Woe to the courts of a nation, when they have forced
the great body of plain men to regard legality as injustice!--woe to the
councils of a nation, when they have forced the great body of plain men
to regard legislation as traffic!--woe, thrice repeated, to gentlemen of
the small pettifogger sort, when they have brought such times, and God
has brought a man to fit them!

There was now in France no man who could stand against the statesman's
purpose.

And so, having hewn, through all that anarchy and bigotry and
selfishness, a way for the people, he called them to the work. In 1626
he summoned an assembly to carry out reforms. It was essentially a
people's assembly. That anarchical States-General, domineered by great
nobles, he would not call; but he called an Assembly of Notables. In
this was not one prince or duke, and two-thirds of the members came
directly from the people. Into this body he thrust some of his own
energy. Measures were taken for the creation of a navy. An idea was now
carried into effect which many suppose to have sprung from the French
Revolution; for the army was made more effective by opening its high
grades to the commons.[A] A reform was also made in taxation, and shrewd
measures were taken to spread commerce and industry by calling the
nobility into them.

[Footnote A: See the ordonnances in Thierry, Histoire du Tiers Etat.]

Thus did France, under his guidance, secure order and progress. Calmly
he destroyed all useless feudal castles which had so long overawed the
people and defied the monarchy. He abolished also the military titles of
Grand Admiral and High Constable, which had hitherto given the army
and navy into the hands of leading noble families. He destroyed some
troublesome remnants of feudal courts, and created royal courts: in one
year that of Poitiers alone punished for exactions and violence against
the people more than two hundred nobles. Greatest step of all, he
deposed the hereditary noble governors, and placed in their stead
governors taken from the people,--_Intendants,_--responsible to the
central authority alone.[B]

[Footnote B: For the best sketch of this see Caillet, _L'Administration
sous Richelieu._]

We are brought now to the _third_ great object of Richelieu's policy.
He saw from the beginning that Austria and her satellite Spain must be
humbled, if France was to take her rightful place in Europe.

Hardly, then, had he entered the council, when he negotiated a marriage
of the King's sister with the son of James I. of England; next he signed
an alliance with Holland; next he sent ten thousand soldiers to drive
the troops of the Pope and Spain out of the Valtelline district of the
Alps, and thus secured an alliance with the Swiss. We are to note here
the fact which Buckle wields so well, that, though Richelieu was a
Cardinal of the Roman Church, all these alliances were with Protestant
powers against Catholic.[C] Austria and Spain intrigued against
him,--sowing money in the mountain-districts of South France which
brought forth those crops of armed men who defended La Rochelle. But he
beat them at their own game. He set loose Count Mansfyld, who revived
the Thirty Tears' War by raising a rebellion in Bohemia; and when one
great man, Wallenstein, stood between Austria and ruin, Richelieu sent
his monkish diplomatist, Father Joseph, to the German Assembly of
Electors, and persuaded them to dismiss Wallenstein and to disgrace him.

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