Cardinal de Richelieu

The diocese of Luçon—in itself one of the least desirable in France—had to endure some months more of neglect before its new Bishop came into residence.

Richelieu’s return to France, in the early summer of 1607, was a return to Paris and the University, which now saw the unusual sight of a bishop among its students. There were still examinations to pass and distinctions to gain: the theological honours of the Sorbonne were not lightly bestowed, even on a dignitary of the Church. But Richelieu, once more, triumphantly satisfied his examiners, and in the autumn of 1607 he was admitted to the degree of Doctor of the Sorbonne. One may say that the old institution was his mother and his child. She trained the brain that transformed France and directed Europe; she was made illustrious by his munificent care, and his feverish life at last found rest in the shadow of her walls.

In the winter of 1607-8, Henry IV. was at the height of his power and popularity, although certain dreamers, prophets of evil, necromancers, and such-like creatures of the darkness, suggested that his useful reign was near its end. For whatever the immoralities of his life may have been—and they had a fatal influence on society—his political ends and means were excellent. 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. Under Henry and his minister—who did not, however, share his master’s popularity—farming was encouraged, rivers were made navigable, bridges were built, waste lands were reclaimed, new roads were made, new crops, such as potato and beet-root, were introduced, a labourer’s tools were safe from seizure for debt. France was beginning to breathe after long horrors of civil war: feudal oppression was passing away, and the country generally was on the eve of better things, under the eye of a King who, absolute as he certainly meant to be, loved his people and wished them well. 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; gambling at the famous Fair of Saint-Germain—held during the early months of the year on the left bank of the Seine—or planning with Sully, within the walls of the Arsenal, those economies and financial rearrangements which gained him the reputation of being a miser. Henry was a curious character, half a hero, made of gold and of clay; but his Parisians, as a rule, saw little but the gold. He was a familiar sight among them, the frank, good-natured man, with his rosy cheeks, long nose, and whitening beard and hair. They loved him because he was affable, kind, easy-going, polite, and yet could be stern and royal enough when any one displeased him. They loved his keen interest in the city, shown by plans for rebuilding and improving, some of which were already carried out when he died, while some lingered on into the days of Richelieu. His favourite works were the Grande Galerie of the Louvre, the Pont Neuf, the Hôtel de Ville, burnt by the Commune, and the Place Royale, now known as Place des Vosges.

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. James I. cracked coarse jokes with his courtiers and slapped them on the back. Henry IV., though a far more intelligent man, encouraged the same kind of manners among his jovial companions at the Louvre.

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. As one intrigue succeeded another during the whole of Henry’s later life, and as the Queen could never be brought to take these things meekly, it follows that peace seldom reigned at the Louvre. Henry, on his side, turned the tables on his wife by injurious suspicions almost certainly without foundation, and the Duc de Sully himself told Richelieu that he had never known a week pass without a quarrel. On one occasion, in passionate anger, Marie raised her hand to box Henry’s ears! “M. de Sully stopped her so roughly that her arm was bruised, crying out with an oath: ‘Are you mad, Madame? He could have your head off in half an hour. Have you lost your senses, not to remember what the King can do?’ The King went out; and after much coming and going he (Sully) appeased them both. Afterwards, the Queen complained that the Duc de Sully had struck her.”

Sometimes these quarrels had a comic side. The Queen would refuse to dine as usual with the King, and would order a small table to be brought into her cabinet. On these occasions the good-tempered Henry, who never could be angry long, and who preferred living at peace with a wife he did not really dislike, would send her choice morsels from his table, even from his plate. If Marie’s temper had not reached the level of accepting a peace-offering, she would coldly return the dainties. Court gossip declared that she was afraid of poison.

In his book on Marie de Médicis, M. Batiffol gives a curious description, drawn from old records, of the royal dinner at the Louvre when the King and Queen dined together.

No one sat at the table with them, but a privileged public, including the whole Court, crowded the room. The Swiss guards stood round the table, bearded, fierce, German-speaking warriors, “old servants of the Crown,” leaning on their halberds, dressed in velvet, white, blue, and red. Six gentlemen served their Majesties, taking the dishes from the “officers of the kitchen,” who brought them into the room. The menu, a very considerable one, was drawn up by the Queen’s maître d’hôtel and counter-signed by herself. Sometimes, generally on Sundays only, the King’s musicians gave a concert during dinner. As a rule, there was a good deal of conversation. The King and Queen talked to the courtiers who stood in ranks behind the Swiss Guard; not of “affairs,” but of any light and interesting subject that might occur.

On such an occasion the King may well have shown special favour to a young man in episcopal purple, of middle height, very thin, with black hair, a delicate, pointed face, keen dark eyes, under a broad brow full of intelligence, quick to catch and respond to every slightest glance from Royalty. Young Richelieu—“My Bishop,” Henry called him—may have had stories to tell of his Roman experiences, stories pleasing to the King, who had taken the trouble to push his fortunes; and the wit, the memory, the reasoning power, which amazed the Sorbonne, may also have been noticeable at the Louvre.

Sometimes the talk led on to thin ice, and Richelieu knew it: for instance, when the King reminded him of certain things he had written about the Maréchal de Biron, his godfather’s son, beheaded for conspiracy in 1602. It was a lesson as to giving a handle to jealous enemies, which Richelieu did not soon forget.

Dinner over, the Queen returned to her dogs and monkeys and parrots, her gaming, card-tricks and music, or walked in the garden, or drove in the city, perhaps visiting her divorced predecessor, Queen Marguerite de Valois—large, self-indulgent, with a flaxen wig—who led an extravagantly immoral but literary and charitable life in Paris, the adopted sister and aunt of the Royal family; perhaps driving out to Saint-Germain to see the children, who lived there, a large household, legitimate and otherwise, under the care of the Baronne—afterwards Marquise—de Montglat.

The King too, though never forgetful of public business, had his amusements of many kinds—gambling, hunting, building, making love. Sometimes he and the Queen dined out together in Paris, frequently with M. Zamet, banker and money-lender and Henry’s very faithful servant, at his palatial hôtel in the Marais. Sometimes they delighted the Parisians by sharing their amusements in the streets and on the bridges—jousts, sham fights in masquerade, running at the ring. Then were to be seen the young nobles of France, infected with Henry’s own dash and daring recklessness, flinging themselves so desperately into these mock battles that real wounds were given and lives were lost. The famous Baron de Bassompierre, chief of the “dix-sept seigneurs,” leaders of fashion, to whose exclusive ranks Henry de Richelieu also belonged, was nearly killed in one of these encounters in the paved court of the Louvre.

Hardouin de Péréfixe, tutor to Louis XIV. and afterwards Archbishop of Paris, wrote for his pupil’s instruction a history of his royal grandfather, Henry the Great. Drawing on his own memory, or something very near it, he sketched the state of society at the beginning of the century. While the King and his ministers were working hard in lifting their country out of the slough of war and abject misery, most of the nobles were finding mischief for their idle hands to do. The Memoirs of Bassompierre and others prove that Péréfixe told less than the truth: he was too courtier-like, too careful of offending young royal ears, to give much idea of the brutality of manners which existed in the society of Henry IV. and Marie de Médicis; but he describes vividly the temper of the men among whom Armand de Richelieu, clever, poor, observant, shielded by his elder brother’s popularity, was growing into manhood.

“The French noblesse,” says Péréfixe, “being at peace, could not be doing nothing; some spent their time in hunting; some in the company of ladies; some studied belles lettres and mathematics; others travelled in foreign lands; others kept up the exercise of war under Prince Maurice in Holland. But many, with itching hands, eager to show off their courage without leaving home, became punctilious, and at the least word, or at crossing glances, had their swords in their hands. Thus a mania for duels seized on the minds of gentlemen. And these encounters were so frequent that the nobles shed nearly as much blood between themselves as their enemies had made them lose in battle.”

Royal edicts, one after another, had little effect in cooling these hot spirits; especially as Henry usually forgave a crime which his laws threatened with forfeiture of life and goods. In the following reign such laws were less of a mockery, as the nobles found to their cost. Louis XIII. was made of harder stuff; and Richelieu had learnt by personal experience—his brother’s death in a duel with the Marquis de Thémines—the need of a strong hand.

There was not much personal distinction, at this time, among the grandees of France. Henry de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, nearest in blood to the throne, was a shy, gloomy youth, mean in looks and character, and though really clever and ambitious, eccentric to the verge of madness. “Monsieur le Prince,” says Brunet, “père du grand Condé, s’imaginoit être quelque fois oiseau et d’autres fois sanglier, et se cachoit sous les lits et sous les tables comme s’il avoit été dans les forêts.” It was not till 1609, after Richelieu had retired to his diocese, that King Henry, for his own ends, married this young man to the marvellously beautiful Mademoiselle de Montmorency. Then, to the King’s rage and disgust, Condé proved that he had some individuality, and ran away with his wife to Flanders. But for the dagger of Ravaillac, a European war might have followed on this elopement.

François de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, the King’s first cousin, uncle of Condé, brother of Henry’s old companion-in-arms and once himself a fighter, was elderly, deaf, and incapable. He appeared little at Court, but lived in Paris on the revenues of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. His wife, Louise Marguerite de Lorraine, a brilliant mischief-maker, with her mother, the lively old Duchesse de Guise, widow of Henry le Balafré, was among the few really intimate friends of Queen Marie de Médicis. Henry IV., who had once thought of marrying her, ended by disliking her, resenting her influence over his wife. But she kept her place at Court, and after the Prince de Conti’s death she is said to have secretly married Bassompierre, first of courtiers and her lover of many years.

Charles de Bourbon, Comte de Soissons, usually known as Monsieur le Comte, was the Prince de Conti’s half-brother, his mother, Françoise d’Orléans-Longueville, having been the second wife of Louis I., Prince de Condé. Though outwardly loyal to Henry IV., he was perhaps the most dangerous enemy the King had in his own immediate circle. Ambitious, proud and violent, he never forgave Henry for breaking an early promise of marrying him to his sister, Catherine of Navarre. Jealous of his own position, he resented every mark of favour shown by the King, especially the honours showered on the young Duc de Vendôme, Henry’s eldest legitimised son. If a fit of the sulks had not kept Monsieur le Comte out of Paris at the time of Henry’s death, he would have disputed the regency with the Queen. Not being on the spot, he was neither clever, strong, nor popular enough to disturb the appointed order of things.

Henry de Bourbon, Duc de Montpensier—familiar to the Richelieu family as lord of Champigny—was of no account at all, in court or camp, during his later years. But he had been an heroic soldier. Son of that Montpensier, the leader and patron of “the Monk” Richelieu and his brother, who swept Poitou with fire and sword in the religious wars, and of his furious Duchess, the soul of the League, the sister of Henry le Balafré, who brought about the murder of Henry III., he, with so many other Catholic princes and nobles, fought his uncles and the League under the banner of Henry of Navarre. A terrible wound in the face received at Dreux, where he commanded a regiment of cavalry, brought Henry de Montpensier’s public career to an end at twenty-seven. His life, after this, was one of more or less suffering. He fell out of favour for some time with the King, being suspected of sympathy with the Biron conspiracy. He married, in middle life, his cousin Henriette Catherine de Joyeuse, another of the Queen’s intimate friends, and they had one daughter, born in 1605, the heiress of all the immense Montpensier possessions; by her marriage with Gaston of France the mother of the famous Anne Marie d’Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier, commonly known as La Grande Mademoiselle.

M. de Montpensier appears to have lived a great deal at Champigny, a favourite among his many châteaux. Thirty years after his death, on her way to visit the new splendours of Richelieu, his granddaughter found that he was still beloved there, although the almighty Cardinal, levelling his house with the ground, would gladly have destroyed his memory.

The Duke died at his hôtel in Paris on the last day of February 1608, wasted by a long decline, and devotedly nursed to the end by his eccentric Capuchin father-in-law, Père Ange, in the world Duc de Joyeuse. “Bon prince,” l’Estoile says of Montpensier, “and as such regretted and mourned by the King, the nobility and all the people.” The usual amusements of the Carnival were stopped; even the little Dauphin was not allowed to dance his ballet before the King. Three weeks later a funeral service was held at Notre Dame, with an oration by the popular preacher M. Fenouillet, Bishop of Montpellier. The ceremony, which was simple, derived dignity from the presence of one hundred and twenty poor men in long robes, carrying torches. Another and grander service was held in April. Between these two occasions, the last male descendant of Robert, son of Saint Louis, was conveyed with an escort of three hundred horse to Champigny, and was buried in the chapel which still exists there.

The Duc de Montpensier’s widow married Charles, Duc de Guise, who, with his brothers, represented the princely House of Lorraine at the French Court. By birth and position, of course, he was one of the first men in France; personally he was of little account, and hardly a worthy descendant of the great Dukes of the sixteenth century. He had not even their looks, being short and snub-nosed. He was witty, agreeable and generous, very frivolous and a great flirt. Richelieu, in the first volume of his Memoirs, gives Henry IV.’s own estimate of this head of the Guise family: “Plus de montre que d’effet”; rather brilliant in company, and judged capable of great things by those who did not know him; but so slothful and lazy that he cared for nothing but pleasure, “et qu’en effet son esprit n’était pas plus grand que son nez.”

Among the more conspicuous nobles, the Duc de Bouillon, the malcontent leader of the Protestants, was a constant thorn in the King’s side. The Duc d’Épernon, an ambitious, adventurous courtier of Gascon origin, had been a favourite of Henry III., and was not much loved by Henry IV., who did not trust him. His son, Bernard, married Gabrielle-Angélique de Bourbon, the King’s daughter by the Marquise de Verneuil. This alliance was roughly declined by the old Duc de Montmorency, Constable of France, to whom Henry proposed it for his splendid young son, that Henry de Montmorency, last of the direct line, whose high head was among those to be mown down, at a future day, by the implacable Cardinal.

Among left-hand Royalties, the oldest was Charles de Valois, Comte d’Auvergne, afterwards Duc d’Angoulême, a man of a certain courage and humorous charm, but foolish, dishonest, and unlucky. He was the son of Charles IX. and Marie Touchet, who married the Comte d’Entraigues after the King’s death, and became the mother of Henriette d’Entraigues, Marquise de Verneuil, Henry IV.’s passion and the special abhorrence of Marie de Médicis. In a fit of jealous fury, and in the supposed interest of her children, Madame de Verneuil intrigued with Spain against Henry. It was only the King’s enduring infatuation which saved her half-brother, the Comte d’Auvergne, from losing his head. As it was, he spent ten of his best years, from 1606 to 1616, shut up in the Bastille.

Henry’s own son by Gabrielle d’Estrées, Duchesse de Beaufort, the legitimised prince who was first known as César-Monsieur, then created Duc de Vendôme, was the spoilt favourite among his children. No more odious young fellow was to be found in France. Spiteful, of vicious tendencies, “c’est un mauvais drôle, violent, moqueur, brutal.” There was every probability that César, whom the King openly preferred to his little lawful son, the future Louis XIII., would one day be the most powerful of all the princes. Henry had already arranged a marriage for him with a rich heiress of royal blood, Françoise de Lorraine, only daughter of the Duc de Mercœur.

Such were the bearers of some of the grandest old names in France, during the last years of Henry IV.’s reign. 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. He was also cordially hated for his grim, uncompromising manners, his impatient scorn of all courtly weaknesses and extravagances. But he was the one great statesman in France, beside whom the other ministers were of no account, and he would have laughed aloud, in the year 1608, if any one had prophesied coming disgrace in his ears: an honourable disgrace, it is true, but never to be retrieved; while, equally incredible, the young bishop of an obscure diocese was to wield a power beyond his own most ambitious dreams.

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. The terrible gloom was made responsible for horrid crimes of all sorts. The new year brought so severe a frost that men, women, cattle and birds died of cold in the fields about the city, or were partially frozen and maimed for life.

Evidently the Bishop of Luçon was among the sufferers from this abnormal season. He was obliged to excuse himself, on account of illness, from obeying the King’s command to preach before the Court at Easter. After this disappointment, he was ill in bed for about four months, as we know from his letters to M. d’Alincourt, son of the Duc de Villeroy, Henry’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had actively befriended him as ambassador in Rome. Richelieu was not ungrateful, and there is something more than worldly politeness in these graceful, sincere letters, written from his sick room to welcome M. and Mme. d’Alincourt back to Paris and to lament that his “fascheuse maladie” hinders him from hastening to kiss their hands.

In the late autumn of the same year the claims and grumblings of Richelieu’s far-off diocese at last made themselves effectively heard. There may have been other reasons for his rather hasty departure in dark December days. The doctors may have advised country air as a help towards shaking off an almost chronic state of fever. Or possibly, after so long an absence from Court, his place in the royal favour may have seemed less secure, and he was not rich enough to buy influential friends. Or Henry, who liked men to do their duty, may have given a hint too plain to be neglected.

In any case, having borrowed four horses and a coachman, the Bishop of Luçon left Paris behind him, and started on his long unpleasant journey to the dreary marshes of Lower Poitou.