Cardinal de Richelieu

In the autumn of the year 1615 Richelieu was appointed chaplain to the new young Queen of France, Anne of Austria. He owed this appointment partly to the impression made by his good looks and talent on Marie de Médicis, partly to the friendly intrigues of the Bishop of Bayonne—afterwards Archbishop of Tours, and an adorer of the beautiful Duchesse de Chevreuse. Owing to the troubled state of France and the long delay of the royal entry into Paris, he did not enter upon his duties till the late spring of 1616.

The easy triumph of the Court party over the rebel elements in the nation had not lasted long. When the Parliament of Paris saw that the States-General and all their talk had ended in nothing—no reform of abuses, no strengthening of the law, while Concini, the foreign favourite, now a Marshal of France and Lieutenant-General of Picardy, was fast becoming the most powerful person in the kingdom—it raised its voice in angry remonstrance. And the men of law did not stand alone. “Derrière le parlement,” says M. Henri Martin, “il y avait les princes, et à côté des princes, les huguenots.” In fact, a strong party was making a new and final struggle against the Spanish marriages. The voice of the English ambassador, Sir Thomas Edmunds, chimed in with those of Condé, Bouillon and the Parliament, begging at least for delay: in the present state of Europe, James I. found these marriages “inopportune.” His eldest daughter, Elizabeth, had lately married the Protestant Elector Palatine, nephew of the Duc de Bouillon and brought up by him. England was thus strongly linked with the Protestant cause, both in France and Germany.

But neither foreign opinion, Parliament, princes, nor cowardly counsels in her own household—for her favourite Leonora, Concini’s wife, was against her in this matter—could turn Marie de Médicis from her intention. The King and the Ministers, under her orders, haughtily denied that the Parliament had any right to interfere in affairs of State. She tried, but in vain, to win over Condé and his friends. When her failure was plain—Condé retiring into the country, publishing a manifesto which demanded the delay of the marriages and the disgrace of Concini and the old Ministers, and following up his words by raising an armed force—she replied by arresting his friend Nicolas Le Jay, a president of the Parliament and leader of the opposition there. The guards seized him at five o’clock in the morning of August 17 and hurried him into a coach. On that same morning the whole Court, conducted by the Ducs de Guise and d’Épernon with a strong body of troops, set out on the long journey to the south. President Le Jay, sorely against his will, followed the King as far as Amboise, where he was left behind as a prisoner.

Concini—formerly Marquis, now also Maréchal d’Ancre—remained to oppose the princes in Picardy, of which the young Duc de Longueville was governor. The Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin (Montmorency-Laval, Marquis de Sablé) was left with a royal army of 12,000 men to protect and overawe Paris, already commanded by the guns of the Château de Vincennes, and to keep a check on the Prince de Condé.

The royal progress to the south was slow and dangerous, with many delays and annoyances. Travelling was not easy even in summer weather. The long train of coaches, baggage-waggons and pack-mules, horsemen, running footmen, with the large military escort, took three days to travel the good road between Paris and Orléans, and then for some unknown reason, perhaps the uncertainty of Condé’s movements, did not arrive at Tours for ten days more. Here the Court was met by three deputies from the Huguenot assembly at Grenoble, who had just missed His Majesty at Paris, and who, “with more insolence than formerly,” says Richelieu, pressed again upon him the demands of the Tiers État and requested him to proceed no further on his journey, “in which they were interested, not only as being of la Religion prétendue réformée, but as good Frenchmen.”

In consequence of this and other disloyal proceedings, the King publicly declared the Prince de Condé and all his adherents guilty of high treason unless they laid down their arms within a month, and sent his declaration to be registered by the Parliament of Paris.

The Court arrived at Poitiers on September 4, and was detained there, to the Queen-mother’s great vexation, till the 27th. The little Madame of thirteen, on her way to be married to the Prince of Spain, had an attack of small-pox, and Marie herself suffered from an inflamed arm. As Condé was already fighting his way across country with the object of blocking the road to Spain, while the Duc de Rohan, with a small Huguenot army, was preparing to second him by occupying Guienne and the Bordelais, it appeared at one moment as if the royal marriages might be effectually stopped.

Two persons profited by the delay. One was the Maréchale d’Ancre. That mysterious Leonora, accused, probably falsely, of witchcraft and so many other crimes, seized this opportunity to creep back into the favour of her royal mistress and foster-sister, whom she, in concert with the Minister Villeroy and others, had seriously annoyed by advising her against pressing on the marriages. By devoted nursing of the royal invalids, and by the help of her Jewish doctor, Montalto, Leonora soon regained Marie’s selfish affection, to lose it once more, and finally, before the end of her tragic life.

The other person who profited by the royal visit to Poitiers was the Bishop of Luçon. On returning from Paris in the spring, feverish and irritable, he had plunged deep in theological studies at his favourite Coussay. It seems to have been a grievance that even his friends should disturb him at his books. But when the Court arrived at Poitiers and was detained there, all loyal persons of any distinction in the province were bound to wait upon their Majesties. The Bishop of Luçon was among the foremost in paying his duty. Certain vague talk of the chaplaincy to Queen Anne now took solid shape, and he received the promise of his appointment, which was definitely made in November, when the Court was at Bordeaux. During the interval, it is evident that Richelieu considered himself bound to the Queen-mother’s service. He made it his business to send a report of the health of Madame, who was left behind at Poitiers for a few days when the Court hurried forward; and his letters to Marie de Médicis are full of grateful devotion.

The little French princess was conveyed to the Spanish frontier, and the little Spanish princess was received in exchange. Under the escort of the Duc de Guise and six thousand men—for the Huguenots, under Rohan, made the journey perilous—she was brought to Bordeaux, where the King and his mother awaited her. There the marriage was finally blessed—it had already, in the case of both princesses, been celebrated by proxy—and there the Court lingered on till the middle of December, when it began its slow northward journey, not reaching Tours till January 25, 1616.

The country through which the Court travelled was in a terrible state, trampled and devastated by armies—“chose pitoyable et horrible,” says Pontchartrain. In spite of the Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin, Condé had crossed the Loire at Neuvy and was storming westward through Berry, Touraine and Poitou, “pillant et saccageant,” says Richelieu, “tous les lieux où il passoit.” Again Madame de Richelieu had her share in the sufferings of the poor province, which seemed to her even worse off than in the Wars of the League. Forty years she had lived at Richelieu, and never had she seen such men or such ravages. “If these armies believe in God,” she said, “it is as the devils do.” The army of Bois-Dauphin was also marching south-westward, to protect the progress of the Court. Friend or foe, royalist or rebel, it made no difference in the wholesale robbery and cruelty which desolated the villages, utterly destroying any lingering peaceful fruit of Henry’s administration. Even Sully had now taken sides with Condé; and the Ducs de Soubise and de la Trémoïlle had raised a fresh army of Huguenots in Poitou. The wintry weather made everything worse. If the armies caused the wretched peasants to suffer, they suffered themselves. An icy rain was followed by hard frosts, snow, and “a great furious wind”; thousands of men, on both sides, died of the wet and the bitter cold. In Paris, boats and bridges were wrecked by the masses of broken ice in the Seine.

The Bishop of Luçon, writing strong remonstrances on his mother’s and his own behalf to the commanders, was also painfully interested in the negotiations which began after the Court had reached Verteuil. He would have been glad to be actively employed, but his time was not quite come, and he could only look on, trusting to his friends—especially Claude Barbin, an old acquaintance, the trusted financial secretary of Marie de Médicis—to push his name and fortunes.

Both parties were tired of the struggle. The Court did not wish for eternal war: the princes and their followers saw that, the Spanish marriages once carried through, their wisest line of action was to make a good bargain for themselves while posing as disappointed patriots. The treaty of Loudun satisfied them for the time. Several of the King’s older Ministers were sacrificed, notably Chancellor Sillery. The Maréchal d’Ancre had to give up his command in Picardy, with the strong city of Amiens, to the Duc de Longueville, but was consoled with the military government of Normandy. A general amnesty was published: President Le Jay was set at liberty, and the Comte d’Auvergne was freed from his long confinement in the Bastille; the rights already granted to the Huguenots were confirmed; Condé’s war expenses were paid, amounting to 1,500,000 livres. Decidedly a good bargain; the best he had ever made. “This time, it is true,” says M. Henri Martin, “Condé’s soldiers had well earned their money: they had pillaged, burnt, ravaged France with great zeal, from the banks of the Somme to those of the Garonne.”

The other princes were also magnificently paid: their rebellion cost the country, “according to Richelieu, more than twenty millions”; and in the matter of places and governments, they had what they chose to demand. In addition, Condé claimed the right of signing the decrees of the Royal Council. The Duc de Villeroy, a clever old politician, advised the Queen to grant this also. It was better, he said, to bind Monsieur le Prince to the Court than to let him fortify himself in the provinces. “Do not fear,” he said, “to put a pen in a man’s hand while you are holding his arm.”

So ended the demonstration against the Spanish marriages. Marie de Médicis gained her point: the princes found effectual consolation; and the poor people of France, as usual, paid the bill. The salt tax, which had been reduced, was raised to its former level, and new river tolls were established.

The Court lingered at Tours and at Blois until the whole business of the treaty was concluded, and made its triumphal entry into Paris on May 16, 1616—an unlucky conjunction of numbers, according to astrologers. The young Queen, a pretty and attractive girl in her indolent Spanish way—somewhat petulant, and no wonder, considering the miseries of the journey not to be escaped even by queens, and the cool neglect of her boy-husband—sat in an open litter carried by mules, for the better view of the citizens of Paris. The noise in the streets was so great—bells, drums and trumpets, the clatter of arms (for the city bands were all on foot and firing off their muskets)—that Her Majesty’s mules pranced with terror, and she was obliged to take refuge in her coach. But the welcome of Paris was undoubtedly hearty, and if the Spanish marriage still caused discontent, it did not appear openly. Indeed the Spanish embassy and their young Princess had only to complain of the fact that the opposite party had gained most of its ends in the treaty of Loudun, and that their enemy, the Prince de Condé, with certain Huguenot magnates, his allies, appeared for the moment to rule both Court and Council.

The Bishop of Luçon had preceded the Court to Paris. He had taken a house in the Rue des Mauvaises-Paroles, in the quarter of the markets; an old street which still existed in the early nineteenth century, but has since been swept away. Here he was within easy reach of his Court duties at the Louvre.

Under the high roofs of the palace, in the old round towers and new pavilions and galleries, crowded in a labyrinth of rooms and staircases, walled courts and gardens, surrounded by a confused noise of building, especially towards the river, where the long gallery, joining the Louvre to the Tuileries, was not yet finished, blocked to the west, on the site of the Place du Carrousel, by narrow streets of great hôtels and mean houses, churches, chapels, hospitals—lived the young King and Queen with their households, and the Queen-Mother, herself lodged in a low, dark, but richly furnished entresol, with as many of her ladies, attendants, favourites, servants, as could find room in the old rabbit-warren of so many and such ghostly memories.

At the moment, though her personal rule was not to last long, Marie de Médicis, the Florentine, the “fat banker,” as Madame de Verneuil disrespectfully called her, was the centre of power and the fountain of promotion. It was therefore especially to her that the courtiers, Richelieu among them, paid their devoted duty.

Marie de Médicis was at this time a handsome, heavy-looking woman of forty-three; cold of temperament, grave and haughty in manner, yet without real dignity; obstinate, yet weak; nervous, irritable, subject to fits of violent anger with floods of tears; never affectionate or caressing, even to her own children; fond of amusement, of animals, dwarfs, freaks of nature; passionately eager for power and magnificence; a lover of beautiful things, a generous but ignorant patron of art; especially curious of precious metals and stones, jewellery, bric-à-brac of all kinds; interested in architecture, building and gardening. She laid the first stone of her palace of “Luxembourg” in 1615, and in this very year 1616 she planted the stately avenue of elms, known as the Cours-la-Reine, along the river-bank beyond the gardens of the Tuileries. Splendid in her gifts, she was wildly extravagant, as soon as it became possible, with the money of the State. She was superstitious and religious, even dévote, after her fashion, and the Church in France owed her much: if not refined by nature or training, she was yet always on the side of decency and moral reform. This is something to say for a woman who was forced for years to live in a Court and a society so openly and coarsely immoral, and to treat La Reine Margot as a friend and a sister.

At the time when Richelieu became attached to the Court, that eccentric princess was no longer living in her palace opposite the Louvre. She died in the spring of 1615, shortly after the closing of the States-General. In his memoirs the Cardinal devotes several pages to that “greatest princess of her time,” her talents and her charities.

At the Louvre, next to the Queen-Mother, the most profitable objects of a courtier’s devotion were the Maréchal and the Maréchale d’Ancre. They were Marie’s most intimate and inseparable friends. Unworthy of such a position, no doubt: but the wife of Henry IV. was hardly happy enough willingly to dispense with those who had followed her from Florence. Leonora Galigaï, her nurse’s daughter, first the companion of her childhood, had been appointed head of her maids: of low birth, but extremely clever, and only too capable of managing her mistress; though her own supposed account of her influence, “that of a clever woman over a dull fool,” seems to have been one of the many inventions of her enemies. A small, dark, ugly, keen-faced creature, Leonora had fallen in love with the handsome adventurer Concini, who had followed the Queen to France in search of fortune. They were married, and together they climbed the heights they desired. Concini swaggered among nobles and princes, the very type of a royal favourite. He was an insolent, magnificent bully, with whom the greatest in the land had to reckon. Yet, though envied and slandered, he was not entirely unpopular, even at Court. Bassompierre observed that he was neither perfection nor a fool. He had the daring courage which came of belief in his own lucky star. He was good-natured and kind, except to his wife; with her, in spite of their mutual interests, he quarrelled incessantly, and they lived mostly apart. But the many scandalous jokes, songs and stories which dealt with the supposed love-affairs of Concini and the Queen are pronounced by modern historians to be without foundation.

For some years the husband and wife concerned themselves little with politics. Money and position, especially money, of which Leonora was excessively greedy, were their favourite objects. They bought a palace in the Rue de Tournon, near the old Hôtel de Luxembourg, and furnished it splendidly. But Concini lived chiefly in a house near the river, at the south-east corner of the small garden of the Louvre, between it and the old Hôtel de Bourbon. By a bridge from the house to the garden he could communicate with his wife’s apartments, above those of the Queen.

Leonora left her rooms seldom and unwillingly, except for necessary attendance on her mistress. She was a nervous invalid, and depended much on Jewish doctors, quack remedies, and—according to her enemies—the black art. We are also told, however, that she confessed regularly and caused the Bible to be read to her. M. Batiffol, in his picturesque study of the time, describes how she sat all day threading beads or playing the guitar—she was a fine musician—in the midst of rich hoards of every description: tapestry, embroidery, mirrors, cabinets, carpets, cushions, counterpanes, of the most splendid materials; endless quantities of gold and silver plate; wardrobes and chests full of beautiful garments that she seldom wore. Beyond these treasures, she cared for little but money: when she meddled with politics, it was for the sake of money, or for her husband’s advancement; and this last matter interested her keenly in the exciting changes of that winter, which had carried her, sorely against her will, on a most trying journey.

The return from that journey found the Maréchal d’Ancre, now Lieutenant-General of Normandy, at the height of his power, though a quarrel with the people of the markets lost him some popularity. The reconstruction of the Ministry, the fall of Sillery, the temporary superseding of Jeannin, President of the Council, and later of the Duc de Villeroy, left the way open for clever men such as Barbin and Mangot, both followers of Concini. Both admirers, too, of the Bishop of Luçon, who very soon, by their means, was to become a Minister of State.

From the point of view of a courtier or a politician, the inmates of the Louvre least worth considering were the young King and Queen. Both were born in 1601, and in that summer were not quite fifteen years old: two children, with the minds and tastes of children, on whom etiquette weighed heavily, who were shy of each other, and cared only for their own chosen companions and sports.

The little Queen seems to have been singularly childish, for a princess brought up in the stately Court of Spain. Surrounded at first by her Spanish ladies, who adored and petted her, she made grave ambassadors anxious, though her coquettish beauty attracted the French. But there was a lack of majesty, a love of jokes and games, an impatience of everything serious, a quick and wilful temper, an amazingly short memory, combined with a frank regret for her old life—“bien souvent l’Espagne me manque,” she wrote home in the early days—hardly suitable to a Queen of France. Her new subjects did not complain; in truth, after the first rejoicings of her arrival, they saw little of her. Sometimes she appeared at Court balls, ballets and carrousels, brilliant in her fresh youth, with her dazzlingly white skin, large eyes, chestnut hair, and the exquisite hands which were her crowning beauty. Sometimes she drove out in a coach to Saint-Germain, and spent the day hunting and hawking with the King, who hardly cared for her company at any other time. Her chaplain, the Bishop of Luçon, attended on her at the Louvre as a most formal duty. Personally, Anne never liked him. Though not yet too terrible, he was always too serious for her. But the Spanish ambassador wrote of him to Philip III.: “There are not two men in France so zealous for the service of God, of our Crown, and of the public weal.”

Time was to show whether his Excellency was right on all or any of these points.

Louis XIII. had been an attractive little child, and was now a handsome, simple, straightforward boy, whose health and temper, unluckily, had been ruined by mismanagement. The diary of his physician, Hérouard—curious if unpleasant reading—shows us a child brought up on pills and potions quite as much as on food. Add constant and severe whippings for every small fault, and we have the training that Henry IV. and Marie de Médicis, here in entire agreement, thought fitting for their eldest son. Long after Louis was King of France the floggings continued, enraging interludes to Court etiquette and ceremonies. “Give me less manners and less whipping!” the poor boy cried one day, when his mother and her ladies rose and curtseyed on His Majesty’s entrance.

No wonder that the face he turned to the outside world—including, for him, his mother and his wife—was sulky and misanthropic. He had affection to give; but it was all for the one or two special friends who understood him, and who made it their business to help and indulge him in the sports he cared about; hunting and hawking three or four days a week in the forests and the open country near Paris; while in the intervals there were rabbits and small birds to be caught in the precincts of the Louvre and the Tuileries, and on wet days various indoor amusements—cooking, carpentering, turning, teaching his little dogs tricks, building card castles, and so on. He was passionately fond of music. Court functions bored him terribly; and though forced, after his majority, to attend the Council that ruled in his name, and behaving there with sufficient dignity and intelligence, he took very little active interest in affairs of State. This carelessness, though more apparent than real, exactly suited his mother, her favourites and her ministers. France was given to understand that the young King was too delicate, too incapable, to act for himself in any public way.

It was not unnatural that all who had political or social ends to gain should have thought it safe to ignore the King and Queen as children of no account. But Louis XIII. had one trusted friend; and the Bishop of Luçon, with many others, was bitterly to repent a too low estimation of the powers of the Sieur de Luynes.

Charles d’Albert de Luynes was now a man of eight-and-thirty. He was the eldest son of a small land-owner in Provence, and took his territorial name from a fief near Aix, which was his mother’s dowry. His two younger brothers, Honoré and Léon, who shared his marvellous fortunes—one becoming Duc de Chaulnes, the other Duc de Piney-Luxembourg—were known in their earlier days as Seigneurs de Cadenet and de Brantes; Cadenet being a small island in the Rhône, Brantes a farm and vineyard on a hill at Mornas. The three brothers, all clever and amiable, caring for each other with an unselfish affection rare in those days, began life as pages to François de Daillon, Comte du Lude, a very great man in his own province of Anjou, and a witty and audacious courtier. He and his friend M. de la Varenne advanced the three young southerners to the service of King Henry IV., who gave them appointments in the Dauphin’s household. Even then the three, generally liked and esteemed, says Richelieu, had but one pony and one good coat amongst them.

It was not only his skill in falconry and all other kinds of sport which endeared Luynes to his young master. From the first he made himself his friend. He was a really good-natured man, as well as a fine sportsman and an ambitious courtier, and he laid himself out to give freedom and happiness to the oppressed, stammering boy. Louis learned, from a child, to fly to Luynes in all his troubles. He was his constant companion through the day, his chief playmate, the organiser of his leisure time. At night in his dreams, often restless and feverish, the boy would cry out for Luynes.

This high favour did not pass unnoticed, of course, by the Queen-mother and Concini. They might have crushed Luynes in the early days, but they took the line of propitiating him—a very great and fatal mistake, according to Richelieu. Marie gave him the government of Amboise, resigned by the Prince de Condé in 1615. She thought thus to make Luynes her creature; and the Maréchal d’Ancre, who had watched him anxiously for a short time, was deceived by his retiring manners into thinking him a man of no real account except among birds, but probably a useful friend, having the ear of the King.

Through this summer of 1616, the Bishop of Luçon was steadily advancing in favour. Marie de Médicis appointed him her private secretary, with a handsome pension, and employed him on several political missions. One of these was of real importance and led to striking results.

In spite of the treaty of Loudun and all its advantages, the Prince de Condé and his friends were still in a sulky frame of mind. Instead of coming at once to Paris, the Prince lingered in his new province of Berry, where the discontented showed signs of gathering round him once more. This temper of his caused much anxiety to Marie, her new Ministers, and the Maréchal d’Ancre. It seemed to them necessary that the Prince should come to Paris. Any fresh disloyalty would be less formidable there, and his support of the present government, if he chose to give it, would be more valuable.

The Bishop of Luçon was sent to negotiate with the Prince at Bourges. “The Queen sent me to him,” he says, “believing that I should have sufficient fidelity and skill to dissipate the clouds of suspicion which evil minds had falsely raised against her.” Her belief was justified. Her envoy not only made the most of the promises with which he was laden—promises from herself, from the Maréchal d’Ancre, and last, not least, from Leonora—but he worked on the Prince’s mind by his own clever and flattering persuasions, assisted probably by the influence of Père Joseph and his brother, M. du Tremblay, who were partisans of Condé.

The Prince came to Paris, and was honourably received by their Majesties at the Louvre. Immediately all Paris was at his feet. “The Louvre was a solitude,” says Richelieu; “his house was the old Louvre”—on the site of part of the fortress of Philippe Auguste—“and one could not approach the door for the multitude of people crowding there. All who had any affair on hand addressed themselves to him; he never entered the Council but his hands were full of petitions and memoirs which had been presented to him, and which were granted at his will.”

At first Condé enjoyed his new popularity and used his power with moderation. Had he been a wise man, he might have kept it long; but he was weak, dissipated, and fiercely ambitious, saying openly that he had as much right to the throne as the King himself. The other princes, especially the restless and intriguing Duc de Bouillon, worked upon his discontent. Naturally, their first object was the ruin of the Maréchal d’Ancre. Each of them had grievances of his own. Even the Ducs de Guise and d’Épernon, loyal to the Crown, were ready to draw their swords on the favourite. The former Ministers, the Parliament, the people of Paris, were all on the same side, and Concini’s life, darkly plotted against in high places, was openly threatened in the street. One day, going alone to visit the Prince, who was entertaining the English ambassador, Lord Hay, he had a narrow escape of being killed by the servants.

Concini was a brave man, but he realised his danger, and both he and his wife were on the eve of escaping from France. Suddenly, however, the whole face of things changed. The Queen-mother, solemnly warned by the Duc de Sully, saw that some bold step was necessary if she was to save herself, her friends, even the young King, from serious peril. For there were again grumblings of civil war in the provinces, where the Duc de Longueville was attacking the last fortress in Picardy which remained in Concini’s hands.

The Ministers Barbin and Mangot, with the Bishop of Luçon, advised a coup d’état, and it was carried out with extraordinary ease. The Prince de Condé was arrested and imprisoned in the Bastille. The other princes fled, and Concini triumphed once more; but the people of Paris showed their hatred by sacking his palace in the Rue de Tournon, full of treasures worth 200,000 crowns.

On November 14, according to the registers of the parish of Braye, “s’en est allée de vie à trépas noble dame Suzanne de la Porte, dame de Richelieu.” The Bishop of Luçon writes to his brother Alphonse:

M. Avenel gives a letter from Henry de Richelieu, the head of the family, to his sister Nicole (afterwards Madame de Maillé-Brézé), begging her to lay their mother’s body, as honourably as possible, in the chapel of the château, there to await himself and the Bishop, “that we may all together bear her to the grave.”

It was not till December 8 that “noble dame Suzanne de la Porte” was laid in the family vault under the church of Braye. But it appears that her son Armand was waited for in vain. There was question of a special embassy to Spain on the affairs of the Duke of Savoy; there was the immediate prospect of becoming a Minister of France. Indeed, he was already one of a triumvirate—Barbin, Mangot, Richelieu—on whom, under Concini, depended all affairs of State. Between his mother’s death and her funeral, he was writing letters vowing eternal gratitude both to the Maréchal and to Leonora, through whose favour and consideration alone, he declared, their Majesties had been pleased to appoint him Secretary for Foreign Affairs.