Cardinal de Richelieu

Before Armand de Richelieu was eleven years old, his uncle Amador, who was among the first to recognize the boy’s brilliant gifts, carried him off to Paris and placed him at the University. It was the family intention that Armand should carve out his living in a career of arms. The eldest brother, Henry, the seigneur of Richelieu, was to marry, and to cut a figure at Court. Being a charming and agreeable young fellow, he was likely to succeed in this line. Alphonse was a saint, and a born ecclesiastic; his future needed no arrangement; the see of Luçon was waiting for him. After the death of the great-uncle, Jacques du Plessis, in 1592, the revenues of the diocese were taken over by a titular bishop—no other than M. Yver, curé of Braye and chaplain at Richelieu—a worthy warming-pan who paid the largest portion to Madame de Richelieu, and wasted as little as possible on the cathedral and the diocese. The canons rebelled and complained most unreasonably, we are told; but Henry IV. had confirmed Henry III.’s grant of the bishopric to the Richelieu family, and the Chapter could obtain no redress. They had to wait till Alphonse was of age to be consecrated.

It was the right thing for every young Frenchman, of every rank, whatever his future walk in life might be, to go through his course at one of the universities. A king’s son might be found on the Paris benches, listening to the same lecture with the clever son of a tradesman or even a peasant from a remote province. The poor students were quite as numerous as the rich; they filled the high houses and crowded the narrow streets of the famous Pays Latin; they “lived as they could,” and their character as a community did not alter much in the course of centuries.

When Armand de Richelieu was first entered at the College of Navarre, where “the great Henry” had studied before him, the University was at a low ebb, both as to professors and students. The wars of the League, the fighting in the streets, the horrors of the siege, had driven most decent people away from Paris, while armies of vagabonds and fugitives took possession of the city, even of that “city within a city,” which the University had been ever since the time when Philippe Auguste built its enclosing wall.

That wall still existed long after the young days of Richelieu. Its broad ditches, its battlements and frequent towers, its seven or eight formidable gateways, two of which defended a bridge and a ferry over the Seine, while the Tour de Nesle, at the western corner, frowned across at the Louvre—all enclosed with mediæval strength that Latin quarter, a half-moon in shape, which sloped up, a mass of lanes, colleges, convents, churches, to the old royal abbey and Church of Ste. Geneviève, where her shrine, the chief religious treasure of Paris, was kept; destroyed in the eighteenth century and replaced by the Pantheon with Voltaire’s bones and Soufflot’s ugly dome.

The University existed before the colleges. They were founded, one by one, by charitable men and women, mostly for the benefit of the poor scholars of different special towns or countries. Often their names told their story; but sometimes they were called by the name of the founder, such as the “Collège du Cardinal Lemoine.”

The College of Navarre was one of the best known and highest in reputation. It was founded in 1304 by Jeanne, wife of Philippe le Bel and Queen of Navarre in her own right, in memory of the victory of Mons-en-Puelle in Flanders. 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. “Navarre” did not always remain so exclusive. But this was probably its character in Richelieu’s time, though we do not positively know whether the young gentleman, with his private tutor and his footmen—all of whom remained many years in his service—lodged in the college or at his grandfather’s house in the Rue Hautefeuille.

The College of Navarre had had famous men among its tutors and professors. Nicolas Oresme, one of its early head masters, was tutor to King Charles V., who owed to him his surname of “The Wise.” He was a translator of Aristotle, and is supposed to have made the first French version of the Bible. Somewhat later, the celebrated mystic, Jean Gerson, believed by many to be the real author of the Imitatio Christi, was a teacher in the college and became Chancellor of the University. A famous Principal, also Chancellor, was Cardinal d’Ailly, Archbishop of Cambray, a theologian of tremendous strength, known at the Council of Constance as the “Eagle of France,” and “the Hammer of the Heretics.”

The traditions of “Navarre” were inspiring and severe. At the end of the sixteenth century, when young Richelieu was going through its courses of “grammar” and “philosophy,” the college was ruled by Jean Yon, a lover of Cicero, of discipline, and of Church ceremonies. Long after the days of dry study and compulsory Latin were over, the Cardinal kept a friendly recollection of his old master, and declared that he could never see him without “a feeling of respect and fear.” Probably, therefore, Jean Yon was wisely careful to hide his admiration of the boy, who, according to one of his biographers, “avala comme d’un trait toute la grammaire,” knew by instinct how to baffle his examiners by puzzling counter-questions, and dazzled both teachers and comrades by the bold and sparkling flashes of his genius.

But Master Yon was not always the stern pedagogue. The Cardinal ever remembered with peculiar pleasure taking part, as a singing boy, in the great procession which marched from Ste. Geneviève on her hill, right across Paris, to visit the tomb of St. Denis. The whole University joined in the procession, and on this occasion it was led by Jean Yon and a chanting choir from the College of Navarre.

Once upon a time, they say, that procession was so long that when the head was entering the Church of St. Denis, far away in the northern outskirts of the city, the tail, of great dignity, had not yet come forth from the Church of the Mathurins, where the general rendezvous had been fixed. This was in the time of Charles VI., when all Paris was praying and making processions that his lost senses might be restored to him. In those days, we are told, the University of Paris was the centre of learning for all the nations of Europe and the mother of all their universities, including “Oxfort en Angleterre.” Her European fame and the number of her students had dwindled a good deal before the day when Armand de Richelieu, the slim, keen, black-haired boy of twelve, marched in her procession as an enfant de chœur.

Down the hill they wound, threading the dark labyrinth of high college walls, then perhaps following the Rue St. Jacques, the old Roman road, down to the Petit Châtelet, guarding with its tunnelled gateway the entrance to the Petit Pont; or, more likely, keeping to their own Latin-speaking quarter as far west as the Pont St. Michel—the Pont Neuf was not yet finished—and there crossing to the Island and passing in front of the Palais de Justice, through crowds of men of law, red-robed councillors, officials and hangers-on of the Parliament, quite as busy and as noisy as the ecclesiastical throng they had left behind them. The Pont-au-Change, haunt of money-changers and bird-catchers, carried them on to the farther shore; one of those steep and ancient bridges, chiefly built of wood and blocked with houses, shops and stalls, which were difficult to cross at all times and were constantly in danger from flood or fire. Then the procession’s way was almost blocked by the great round towers and frowning prison walls of the Grand Châtelet. Then through dark and narrow ways it passed out into the wider spaces, the gayer air, of the Paris of the north bank, of kings and their palaces, and leaving the Louvre to the left, the Hôtel de Ville, Bastille, and Temple far to the right, went on by the Rue St. Denis towards the gate of that name, and so out into the frequented road leading to the old towers that sheltered the shrine of the Saint.

All the way there was a constant carillon of bells from a hundred steeples; the red and gold of vestments and banners glowed in the sunshine; trumpets brayed; and with loud chanting the procession paced along. To a boy fresh from his lessons, who was to live on into more colourless times, such a holiday glimpse of the Middle Ages may very well have been a pleasant recollection.

At this time young Richelieu was looking forward to nothing but the life of a soldier, and of course a mercenary one, for his family was likely to endow him with little means of living. The world was his oyster, which he with sword must open. It was nothing new: he would walk in the footsteps of his father and his great-uncles, with the advantage of serving a King whom he heartily admired; of this his Memoirs give proof enough.

When the usual University course was over, M. de la Porte proceeded to make a man and a soldier of his nephew. He placed him at the famous Academy of M. de Pluvinel, a former companion-in-arms of the Grand Provost, who had made a career for himself as a trainer of young gentlemen. He taught them fencing, riding, dancing, music, mathematics, various manly games. He was an authority on fashion and style, wit and manners, the ways of foreign nations; in short, he turned boys fresh from college into men of the world, courtiers, soldiers, diplomatists. There was scarcely a leading man in France in the early seventeenth century who had not passed through the “manège royal” of M. de Pluvinel.

A title was necessary, in order to swagger successfully among the gay cadets of the Academy. Armand became Marquis du Chillou, taking the name from a small estate in Poitou brought into the family by his great-grandmother.

His years of study at the Academy seem to have been among the happiest of his life. Made mentally of steel and flame as he was, ancestral hardness and strength of will joined with a passionate ambition all his own, the fighting career of a successful soldier was likely to attract him irresistibly. When he was young, it seemed indeed the one chance of shining in the world, of commanding men. And he never lost his love for the profession he had to renounce, though it became clear that for a daring spirit such as his, the red robe was as practical a garment as the buff coat. “Sous le prêtre, on retrouve toujours en lui le soldat,” says M. Hanotaux.

There was one drawback to the military prospects of Armand de Richelieu. The delicate, aguish boy had not grown into a strong youth. His keen spirit was now, as ever, a sword too sharp for its frail sheath. Hard study and lack of fresh air during his college days had had their likely effect on his weak constitution and slight frame. For his sake, his mother did not mourn over the family circumstances that forbade him, after all, to be a soldier. “Mon malade,” as she called him, was not of those who could sleep on open field or fell, in mud or mire, as soundly as within stone walls with curtains round his bed.

For the family, it was a question of losing the revenues of the see of Luçon. Alphonse de Richelieu, its intended Bishop, at the age of nineteen or twenty, turned away in disgust from the worldly-wise arrangement, and decided to become a Carthusian monk. It may not be unfair to describe him as “dévot et bizarre”; but one seems to see in this singular resolution an outcome of the reaction against the dead and conscienceless state into which the sixteenth century had brought the French Church; the reaction which was already living and moving in such men as François de Sales, Vincent de Paul, Pierre de Bérulle, though leading them, as to their religious life, into reforming action rather than lonely contemplation.

Armand’s choice was soon made. No doubt the change was to him inevitable. There could not be two young men more different than himself and Alphonse; yet he too had a conscience of his own, of the truly Latin kind which demands any and every sacrifice for the sake of the family. He is said to have written to his uncle, who, one may well believe, was sincerely sorry for him: “The will of God be done: I accept all, for the good of the Church and the glory of our name.” The latter aspiration, at least, was fulfilled.

At seventeen, in the year 1602, the Marquis du Chillou laid down his sword and his title, left M. de Pluvinel’s Academy and returned to the University. A year or two later, there was no more eager student of philosophy and theology than the Abbé de Richelieu. There are merry stories of the time which suggest that he and his private tutor M. Mulot, afterwards his chaplain, were concerned in wild pranks, such as robbing gardens and orchards, which would have been impossible under the strict discipline of old Master Yon. There is a pretty legend which tells that the Cardinal, in his last days, sent for an old college gardener whose peaches he had stolen—the good man’s name was Rabelais, and he came from Chinon—and paid him a large sum of money as compensation for being both robbed and frightened: at that time, an unlucky wretch who was summoned before the Eminentissime went in very reasonable fear of his life.

The sober University, in its clock-work course, hardly knew what to make of Armand de Richelieu. He swallowed theology as he had swallowed grammar, and the ordinary progress of learning was far too slow for him. After studying independently with several learned masters, especially with Richard Smith, an Englishman, of the University of Louvain, afterwards Vicar Apostolic in England, he was ambitious to hold a public disputation at the Sorbonne.

The doctors of that reverend foundation refused the unusual request; but Richelieu, who ardently desired to become an adept in controversy, persuaded his old College of Navarre to be less timidly narrow and conservative. Here the lad of nineteen, worn to a shadow by studying hard eight hours a day, set forth his thesis and defended it against all comers. The listeners were slightly uneasy, for his argument was based rather on philosophy than on strictly theological grounds, and was indeed flavoured by the influence of Jansenius, who came to Paris about this time. But the long struggle between Gallicans and Ultramontanes, Bishops and Jesuits, was only at its beginning, and Jansenism proper was not born; the sixteenth century had known little more than the fiercer, simpler quarrel between Catholics and Protestants, the heretic and the faithful. As a fact, in his own original way, Richelieu held all the doctrines approved and taught by the Sorbonne.

There was every reason why the future Bishop should hurry on his theological studies. The Chapter of Luçon had completely lost its patience; and this is not surprising, for both the cathedral and the episcopal palace were falling into ruins, while no money could be extracted from M. Yver and Madame de Richelieu, until, at last, a decree of the Parliament forced them to provide for the necessary repairs. If the bishopric was to remain in the Richelieu family, Armand must be consecrated with as little delay as possible.

He was not yet near the canonical age of a bishop. He had, however, been ordained deacon in 1606, and early in that year, while he was still hurrying through his last examinations, King Henry wrote to his Ambassador at Rome, recommending the Abbé Armand Jean du Plessis, royally nominated to the bishopric of Luçon, to the favour of His Holiness Paul V., and praying for an early consecration on the ground of the young man’s “mérite et suffisance,” which were such as to make the legal delays morally quite unnecessary.

Such dispensations were common enough, but this one was slow in coming. Paul V., the Borghese Pope, had not long been elected, but was already known for his determined will and strong sense of duty. He was not a man who would lightly break through any laws or customs of the Church, and certainly not to please King Henry IV., whose conversion he distrusted and whose way of life he condemned. The Abbé de Richelieu, hearing nothing from Rome, resolved to wait no longer. In the autumn of 1606 he left Paris and travelled hard to Rome, very impatient, and quite sure that if he could once gain the Pope’s ear and plead his own cause, it would speedily be won.

He was not mistaken, though Paul V. received him coldly on his first introduction by the Ambassador: a self-confident, presumptuous boy who expected to be ordained priest and consecrated bishop at twenty-one, was not likely to meet with instant favour from an elderly, legal-minded martinet. 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.” On the whole, the latter story seems the more probable; but neither has any real foundation.

It is certain, at any rate, that the Abbé de Richelieu made the best use of the months he spent at Rome, and convinced Paul V., himself a clever man, that King Henry’s praise was not undeserved. He preached before the Pope, and his ready learning and splendour of diction were considered miraculous. He carried on arguments with His Holiness on the morals of Henry and other subjects, so firmly yet so respectfully that Paul was altogether charmed. He studied the spirit of Rome, that mysterious city which was at once “the capital of the Catholic world and the centre of the civilized, world.” As the centre of an older world still, of ancient history and pagan art, Rome had not the same attraction for him. All that was to come later, when the Cardinal attempted, without great success, to pose as one of the chief art patrons in Europe.

At this time, his whole mind was given to present advancement, and his intuition as to his own interest was faultless. He learned Italian and Spanish, he courted the Cardinals and other dignitaries, and while dazzling his company with all the light French brilliancy of his young wit, he pleased them by the gentleness and modesty he knew well how to assume. Thus he saved himself from much envy and jealousy which might have nipped his career at the outset.

On April 17, 1607, Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, aged twenty-two years and seven months, was ordained priest and consecrated bishop by the Cardinal de Givry, who had always been his friend. The suffering diocese of Luçon was no longer without a head, and the Roman Easter bells rang in one of the greatest figures in French history.