Cardinal de Richelieu

Neither the Duc d’Épernon’s haughty reserve nor the Abbé Rucellai’s malignant dislike and envy could long affect Richelieu’s place among the Queen-mother’s counsellors. The Treaty of Angoulême was his work, in concert with the King’s ambassadors, Bérulle, Béthune, the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, and last, not least, Père Joseph. On both sides the past was to be forgotten; Marie was to live where she chose and to dispose freely of her revenues; all her partisans were restored to the places and honours of which royal edicts had deprived them. On the other hand, she gave up the government of Normandy for the smaller one of Anjou, with 600,000 crowns in money, and the Duc d’Épernon was obliged to renounce Boulogne, for which he received an indemnity of 50,000 crowns. It was thought that the Queen and her party had the best of the bargain, and every one, even the Duc d’Épernon, gave the Bishop of Luçon credit for the compromise. He had still bitter enemies among the Queen’s entourage, but he had also firm friends, and the best of these was his brother Henry, distinguished alike as soldier and courtier, on whom the Queen immediately bestowed the military government of her chief town and castle of Angers. She thus gravely displeased her more greedy and restless servants, men who preferred active rebellion with its chances to peace and loyalty. The Abbé Rucellai was leader among them, and the Marquis de Thémines, captain of the Queen’s guard, was one of the most ambitious. Various insulting remarks made by him came to the ears of the Marquis de Richelieu; the consequence was a duel, in which Henry de Richelieu fell, stabbed to the heart.

“Death took him,” writes his brother, “but not so suddenly but that the Sieur de Bérulle, who chanced to be passing by, had time to give him absolution.”

It was the sharpest grief that ever touched Richelieu. The two had been much drawn together of late years, and they seemed at this very time to be starting together on a fresh and brilliant career.

The Marquis de Thémines disappeared in disgrace from the Queen’s circle, but others of his party were ready to snatch at the government of Angers and the command of the guards. They were disappointed. Marie de Médicis replaced the dead Richelieu by his uncle, Amador de la Porte, Commander of the Order of Malta, the worthy and gallant man to whom young Armand de Richelieu owed his early education as collegian and cadet. The captaincy of the guard was given to the Marquis de Brézé, whose son Armand, afterwards Duc de Fronsac, was born about this time.

Rucellai and his partisans, seeing themselves out-generalled, vanished one by one and left a clear field to the Bishop of Luçon, whose commanding influence grew every day stronger with the Queen.

A meeting and formal reconciliation between herself and her son became now the question of the moment. In preparation either for this or for the chance of civil war the Court had already moved from Paris, with a strong escort of troops, to the Loire. The first stopping-place was Amboise, where the King received news that the treaty had been concluded. At Angoulême bonfires blazed and a Te Deum was sung; at Tours, where the Court proceeded to establish itself for the summer, things were taken more quietly, perhaps more cynically, for the royal interview was put off from month to month, and Luynes found that he had a formidable person to deal with in the Queen’s chief counsellor. Though the treaty might be signed, there were further arrangements to be made before Richelieu would allow his royal mistress to meet her son.

In the meanwhile there was going and coming between Tours and Angoulême, where the Prince of Piedmont and his young wife, with his brother, Prince Thomas of Savoy, visited the Queen-mother and were magnificently received by her loyal friend the Duc d’Épernon.

The long hot summer dragged slowly on. The young King and Queen, Monsieur (Gaston, Duc d’Orléans, a boy of eleven), the little Princess Henriette, the Duc de Luynes and the whole Court, passed the time as best they could among the woods and rivers of Touraine and Anjou. They visited La Flèche, where the heart of Henry IV. lay in the chapel of the Jesuit College founded by him—and where its ashes are still preserved, the embalmed heart itself having been burnt by patriots in the Revolution. They made a progress among stately sun-baked châteaux, lingering at Le Lude, the owner of which, formerly the patron of Luynes and his brothers, now held the important post of governor to Monsieur. Some of the courtiers, such as Bassompierre, found reasons for riding backwards and forwards, post-haste, between Tours and Paris. The Ministers there needed watching, being apt to sell rich military appointments on their own authority.

At length Richelieu could delay no longer. He had gained for the Queen-mother some additional advantages beyond the April treaty, and he had extracted from Luynes a kind of vague promise, or at least an understanding, that he should be recommended to the Pope for a Cardinal’s Hat. At present this was his chief object and desire.

At the end of August Marie de Médicis left Angoulême to rejoin her son. She was accompanied to the frontier of the Angoumois by the Duc d’Épernon, from whom she parted with tears, and she was escorted on her journey by Hercule de Rohan, Duc de Montbazon, father-in-law of Luynes, whose château of Couzières, near Tours, had been chosen for the royal meeting. It was not large or important, being rather a country-house than a castle; but its woods and gardens were beautiful, and never, in a history not lacking in romance, was Couzières the scene of so much splendour.

The Queen-mother arrived there in the evening, with her train of ladies and gentlemen, among whom were the Archbishop of Toulouse and the Bishop of Luçon. The King left Tours the next morning on horseback, attended by five hundred princes, lords and gentlemen.

“He arrived at the said Couzières before the Queen-mother had ordered her dinner; he entered by the park gate, and the Queen at once came forth to receive him. She met him in the garden, and there they saluted and embraced each other with a great appearance of contentment on both sides; the Queen-mother wept for joy.”

According to tradition, they found little to say to each other. “My son has grown taller since I saw him,” said Marie. “For your service, Madame,” said Louis.

They walked together, surrounded by crowds, to the house, and then, while the Queen dined, Louis strolled in the garden. Later on, another splendid cavalcade arrived from Tours—that of the reigning Queen, who “made her compliments with many demonstrations of joy” and accompanied the Queen-mother in her coach to Tours, the King flying his hawks in the open country by the way.

Marie’s visit to the Court at Tours was not a success. The precedence taken by Anne of Austria offended her. And Luynes was playing a double game. He wanted the reconciliation, which would rid him of an independent adversary; he wanted to work a separation between Marie and the nobles of her party, especially the powerful Duc d’Épernon; but he watched with a jealous eye any appearance of a real understanding between her and the King. As to her friends and servants, he gave them fair words and played them false at every turn. His conduct, dishonest or diplomatic, may be judged by the fact that while the King was writing to the Pope to request that the Archbishop of Toulouse and the Bishop of Luçon should be promoted to be cardinals, Luynes was giving the Court of Rome to understand, by a secret despatch, that only the first name mentioned by the King need be taken in earnest. These “sourdes et déloyales pratiques,” as M. Avenel calls them, continued for many months, and Richelieu had few powerful advocates. Cardinal du Perron was dead; and Cardinal Bentivoglio, the Nuncio, remarked coldly on the extravagance of the Queen-mother’s demand and “la sfrenata ambizione di Lusson.”

The Court left Tours on its return to Paris towards the end of September. The King wished his mother to accompany him, but she refused, choosing first to take formal possession of her government of Anjou. Travelling by way of Chinon, and lingering a few days at the stately castle on the Vienne, which had been made over to her by treaty, and was commanded by the Seigneur de Chanteloube, one of her most violent partisans, she received news which deepened her displeasure and suspicion with regard to the Duc de Luynes. Her younger son’s governor, the Comte du Lude, had died of fever at Tours, and now, without a word to her, Colonel d’Ornano, a creature of Luynes and a quite unfit man for the charge, was appointed in his stead. Another piece of news, sprung upon the Queen-mother without consultation or formal announcement, was that of the release of the Prince of Condé, her own and Richelieu’s enemy, from Vincennes, and his reception by the King, with a royal declaration blaming those who had brought about his captivity. This may have been aimed at the Maréchal d’Ancre, but it struck the Queen. Marie understood that the first prince of the blood was now to be played off against herself in Luynes’ game.

She was magnificently received at Angers. The citizens of that noble old town were as warlike, independent and keenly political now as in the days of King John, and quite as unwilling to “open wide their gates” to any unpopular sovereign. They had been amusing themselves during that summer by rioting against their excellent bishop, Fouquet de la Varenne, on some matter of ecclesiastical discipline. Commander de la Porte, with all his courage and loyalty, was not quite the man to manage “this peevish town.” He was a good-tempered chatterbox. Before the Queen’s entrance into the city, Richelieu wrote a long letter to “my dear Uncle,” in which, after a number of practical details as to arms and provisions, he recommended gravity and dignity in dealing with the bourgeoisie.

All went well on October 16, when Marie took formal possession of her city of Angers. Thousands of people received her with immense rejoicings. There was a grand military display, martial music and ringing of bells, as the Queen approached, having crossed the long arches and causeways of the Ponts-de-Cé. She did not lodge in the gloomy old castle, where Henry II. of England once held his court, but in the most beautiful house in the town, the Logis Barrault, now known to travellers as the Museum of Angers. There a Court soon gathered round her, increasing in numbers from day to day.

This state of things continued through the winter and the spring. Over and over again the King invited his mother to Paris; but she and her intimate counsellors found little satisfaction in the assurances sent by Luynes of the royal good-will. The promises went hand in hand with too many slights and affronts; and though Richelieu, according to his own account, believed the Queen-mother’s right place to be at her son’s Court, and though he felt that his own future lay there, he hesitated to press his opinion against that of the majority of her friends. He could not fail to see, as they did, that “there was much to be feared in the power of the favourites.”

Luynes and his brothers were the first men in France. As to personal character, though spoilt by success, these three Provençal adventurers were good fellows enough; but as to greediness and ambition, Concini himself had not gone further. In order to be independent of the King’s favour, Luynes had contrived to get most of the strong frontier towns of France into his hands. His brothers, one of them a Marshal of France, married two of the richest heiresses in the kingdom and took their place among the highest nobility.

“You would say,” writes Richelieu in his Memoirs, “that France exists for them alone; that for them she abounds in all kinds of riches.... The governments and places that they hold seem in small proportion to those they consider their due; ... what is not to be had for money they take by violence; ... for their private bargains they make use of the money raised from the people for the public good. In a word, if the whole of France were to be sold, ils achèteroient la France de la France même.”

Add to all this the insolent, boasting speeches which came to the Queen-mother’s ears, the complaints of the King’s own Ministers and of the Parliament of Paris, who liked the new favourites no better than the old, and the anger of the nobles who found their pensions unpaid and the best appointments snatched from their teeth;—it was not amazing either that Marie hesitated as to leaving her town and Court in the west to place herself, personally, in the power of Messieurs de Luynes, or that Richelieu was slow in advising her to do so.

In May and June 1620 the governors of provinces were openly showing their discontent. The Duc de Vendôme could dispose of Brittany, the Duc de Longueville of Normandy, the Duc de Mayenne of Guyenne; and these three, with many others, left the Court and retired to their governments, where they began to prepare for civil war. The Duc de Rohan, in the name of the Protestant party, went so far as to advise the Queen-mother to leave Angers for Bordeaux and to assemble an army in the South. One of the chief malcontents, the Comtesse de Soissons, furious at the release of her cousin and enemy, the Prince de Condé, left Paris with her young son and came to Angers. As the summer advanced, the Queen having decided to hold her own in the west, many of les grands followed Madame la Comtesse, and Marie was surrounded by a crowd of restless, warlike nobles and princes, who were held back with difficulty from declaring open and instant war upon the King. Half France, apparently, was on her side—princes, populations, Catholics, Huguenots, and men of law: at one moment a successful campaign against the King and Luynes seemed a certainty, and Angers was the centre of enthusiastic military preparations.

But Richelieu was there—a power behind all the discontented swaggerers of Her Majesty’s Court. A small, strong party, including the Queen herself, believed in him. He had taken care that his friends should hold the places nearest to her: Claude Bouthillier, brother of his faithful Sébastien, was at this time her secretary. The clergy, who always influenced Marie de Médicis, were with him to a man.

He did not intend that the misunderstandings between the Queen-mother and the King, hardly mended by the passing reconciliation at Couzières, should come to actual war. It was he who prevented the move to the South; he who, through all these months at Angers, carried on negotiations with Luynes. Now, as always, he resented the domination of the princes and nobles, remaining convinced that the King must, in the last resort, be the chief authority in the kingdom. He deeply distrusted Luynes, and not altogether for personal reasons of disappointed ambition. In a sense he stood between the two parties; he did not cease to be something of a mediator; his advice to Marie de Médicis was never that of a political firebrand. Still, surrounded by firebrands—Vendôme and his like—it was difficult for the wisest counsels to prevail, and Richelieu seems to have accepted the inevitable, hoping that the warlike show made by the Queen’s friends might so far impress the King as to incline him to listen to the serious complaints poured into his ears by her and by them.

The effect was not precisely this, but Richelieu was in one way content: it was not the Queen-mother who declared war. Louis XIII. himself, egged on, not by Luynes, who doubted and hesitated, but by the Prince de Condé, decided suddenly to march into Normandy and to crush his enemies by armed force.

“I will not stay in Paris,” he said, “to see my kingdom made a prey and my faithful servants oppressed.... My conscience accuses me of no want of piety with regard to the Queen my mother, justice with regard to my people, kind deeds with regard to the nobles of my kingdom. Therefore, allons!”

The words had a ring of Henry IV., and they were justified by the event. With a small army the King swept Normandy. Rouen and Caen made no resistance; the Duc de Longueville and the Grand Prieur de Vendôme fled before their royal master. The first week in August found the King on Angevin soil; on the 7th he was within two miles of Angers, on high ground commanding the road between the city and the Loire. Angers was to his right; the village and bridges of the Ponts-de-Cé to his left.

For a month, ever since the King left Paris, confusion had reigned at Angers. Negotiations had gone on furiously, for neither Louis XIII. nor Luynes wished to come to actual blows with the Queen-mother. Richelieu, in public and private, had done his best; in July, preaching before the Queen and her Court, he warned her that no faithful subject could advise her to rebel against her son, and begged her to consider that no arms could triumph over an angel-guarded King. But all this was of no avail. With hurry and rashness inconceivable, considering that neither d’Épernon, Rohan, nor Mayenne had marched to join them, the warlike party at Angers prepared for resistance.

Marie had a poor set of officers. The Comte de Soissons, supposed to be in command, was a boy of eighteen; he had courage in plenty, but no experience. The Duc de Vendôme was a clever, blustering coward; the Duc de Nemours a courageous fool; the Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin was too old for fighting. Louis de Marillac, afterwards a Marshal of France with a tragic history, did more than any of them; but he also talked more, and his plan for the defence was a foolish one. He and Vendôme attempted to fortify the whole length of the road, about two miles, between Angers and the Ponts-de-Cé, by an entrenchment which, according to Richelieu, would have needed twenty thousand men to defend it. He gave his opinion freely, but soldiers were not going to be advised by a churchman, and “nothing could divert them from their enterprise.”

The sketchy fortification was not even finished, when the King’s troops swooped down to the attack. His infantry fought in the flat meadows, under cover of the lines of hedgerow trees; his cavalry plunged into the Loire, a shorter way of reaching the bridges and the little old castle that defended them. Once the passage of the Loire was in the King’s hands, the Queen-mother’s retreat would be cut off and she would be separated from her partisans in the south country: this was why the King, advised by Condé, did not make a direct attack on the town.

The battle had hardly begun when the Duc de Retz, one of the Queen’s commanders, seized with the idea that some treacherous negotiations were going on in the background, threw up her cause and rode off the field with 1500 men. The rest of the little army, about 2500 men against 14,000, kept up an uncertain struggle along the road and the bridges through some sweltering hours of the August day. A few hundred lives were lost, and it was not till evening that the royal army found itself in possession of the river branches and the little town of Ponts-de-Cé. Even then the wounded governor of the castle, M. de Bethancourt, held out there till the next morning with a garrison of ten men.

Few of the Queen’s officers showed such a spirit. Long before the battle or rout was over, César, Duc de Vendôme, son of Henry IV., came galloping back into Angers with the news that all was lost.

“He entered her presence,” says Richelieu, “avec un épouvantement épouvantable, saying, ‘Madame, I wish I were dead.’ On which one of her ladies, who did not lack wit replied, fort à propos, ‘If that be really your wish you should have stayed where you were....’ The Duc de Vendôme was promptly followed by all the other chiefs, except the Comte de Saint-Aignan, who was taken prisoner.”

So ended “la drôlerie des Ponts-de-Cé,” as the wags called it. Now was the time for the peacemakers. After a few distracted hours, during which, says Richelieu, “fear was absolutely mistress of all hearts and reason had no place,” a treaty, quite amazingly favourable to the Queen-mother, was drawn up by himself and the King’s envoys.

He must have wondered at the success of his own diplomacy. At first, looking round on his terrified party, on the helpless city with a royal army at her gates, he had advised Marie de Médicis to pack up her jewels and ride off by night with a few hundred light horse, fording the Loire and gaining the free country beyond, where she might make her own terms with her enemies. But the unexpected moderation of the King and Luynes made everything easy. The treaty of Angoulême was confirmed; the Queen’s partisans were amnestied; the Ponts-de-Cé with their defences were restored to her; her debts were paid; she had full liberty to live where she pleased, so long as she remained in good understanding with the King and his Ministers.

All this was the work of Richelieu, in concert with Luynes. The truth was, that the rivalry of these two had reached a point where it became plain that they were necessary to each other. Luynes knew, or fancied, that the King was getting beyond his authority: the dismal boy had grown into a man and a soldier. The clever and reckless Prince de Condé made him feel what Luynes never felt or taught—the charm of war. And he was ready, more ready than Luynes wished, for a really cordial reconciliation with his mother. This took place at the old Maréchal de Cossé’s magnificent Château de Brissac, south of the Loire, five days after the battle. Marie again wept tears of joy. “I have you now,” said Louis, “and you shall never escape me again.”

Detested as he was by the nobles and princes, shadowed by Condé, threatened by the Queen-mother’s newly rising influence, Luynes thought it politic to place Richelieu, as far as possible, definitely on his side. “With great caresses,” he renewed the promise of a Cardinal’s Hat. A messenger was sent to Rome with a letter from the King; and this letter was soon followed by the despatch of Sébastien Bouthillier, ever faithful—not, as some writers have represented him, a private envoy from Richelieu himself, but authorised by Louis, ready at this moment to gratify his mother in every way.

But a thousand intrigues, volumes of letters, promises made and broken in France and in Italy, still lay between the Bishop of Luçon and his ambition’s crown. Bouthillier remained at Rome two years, working hard in the dark. He was made Bishop of Aire before his patron became Cardinal, but nothing checked his devoted labour. Old Paul V. was difficult and obstinate. He had enough French cardinals: the young Bishop, to whose early consecration he had half unwillingly consented, had not repaid him well: as Secretary of State, his attitude towards the Holy See had been doubtful: he had shown some inclination of late to ally the Queen-mother with the Huguenots. And besides all this it was well understood at Rome that whatever letters, whatever ambassadors, might be sent by Louis XIII., M. de Luynes was in no hurry.

While continuing his sourdes et déloyales pratiques—no secret to Richelieu, who endured them with sphinx-like patience—Luynes did his best to let all men believe him on the best of terms with the Queen-mother’s chief counsellor. He suggested the union of their families by a marriage between his nephew, Antoine de Beauvoir du Roure, Seigneur de Combalet, and Richelieu’s niece, Marie Magdeleine Vignerot du Pont-de-Courlay. She was a very pretty girl of sixteen; he was a coarse, red-faced, awkward soldier. She was not a willing sacrifice; neither was her uncle particularly eager; he hesitated long indeed for several reasons, but the Queen-mother advised him, for fear of Luynes, to consent, and the marriage was celebrated in Paris in November, during the Court festivities that followed the triumphant return of Louis XIII. from his short campaign against the Protestants of Béarn.

Madame de Combalet’s unwelcome husband did not annoy her long; he was killed at the siege of Montpellier in September 1622. The young widow, a girl of independent spirit, worthy of her mother’s family, at once resolved that she would not be sacrificed again. She made a vow—“un peu brusquement,” says Tallemant—that she would become a Carmelite nun.... “She dressed as modestly as a dévote of fifty.... She wore a gown of woollen stuff, and never lifted her eyes. With all this she was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen-mother and never stirred from the Court. She was then in the full bloom of her beauty. This sort of thing lasted a long time.”

It lasted till the supreme power of the Cardinal made his niece equal to the greatest ladies in France and a probable match for princes. But Madame de Combalet—better known as Madame d’Aiguillon—kept her vow so far as that she never married again.

The campaign against the Protestants of Béarn, undertaken by Louis XIII. immediately after the battle of the Ponts-de-Cé, was successful in its object of enforcing the royal edict of 1617 and restoring Church property, now held by the Huguenots, to the use of the Catholic clergy. At the same time, Henry IV.’s independent little kingdom of Béarn was formally united to the kingdom of France. All this was done with much noise and little bloodshed. It amused the King immensely. One game for another, fighting was better than falconry. Through the darkening days he galloped back to Paris, and had the additional joy of arriving before he was expected.

“Louis XIII. arrived on November 7, early in the morning, accompanied by fifty-four young nobles, riding at full speed, preceded by four post-masters sounding the horn. He rode through the city, where he was not expected. The noise made by his troop woke the citizens, they ran to the windows, and as soon as the monarch was recognised there were cries of Vive le Roi. The guard at the Louvre, seeing an armed troop approach, stood on the defence. They soon learned that it was the King; the palace rang with transports of joy; Louis XIII. flew to embrace his mother and his wife. The day was for him one of triumph. The shops were shut; they feasted in the streets and lighted bonfires in the evening.”

But the Huguenot party did not rejoice. “As soon,” says Richelieu, “as His Majesty had brought Béarn back to its duty, there was talk of the assembling of Huguenots in many parts of the kingdom.” And very swiftly the matter advanced beyond talk. From the central assembly at La Rochelle orders went out for the Protestants to rise in all quarters. In May 1621 Louis XIII. started on a campaign against them which, first under the influence of Luynes, then under that of Condé, lasted through the greater part of two years—a campaign rather of long sieges than of pitched battles, but costing many distinguished lives, among them that of the Duc de Mayenne.

At the opening of this campaign, Luynes made himself Constable of France. He was hardly qualified for the highest military office in the kingdom, being not only timid as a soldier, but absolutely ignorant of the science of war. His career, however, was now nearly at an end. His star had been for some time waning, and Saint-Simon might well say that he died at the right moment, for Louis, “whose eyes were opening,” was beginning to turn against the man whom he had so heartily admired. “Il fut enfin frappé des dimensions de ce colosse formé tout-à-coup,” grown to supreme power in the very moment of Concini’s fall. He made perilous confidences, from which wise courtiers fled, calling the Constable “King Luynes,” and complaining violently of him and his brothers. Luynes did not, as he believed, know his young King through and through.

The favourite fell as suddenly as he had risen. Three days of fever, in a village near the castle of Monheurt, which the royal army was besieging, carried off the richest and most powerful man in France. A few days later, the servants who conveyed him to his own estates for burial were playing at dice on his coffin while they rested their horses.

It is not fair to judge Luynes entirely from the point of view of enemies and rivals, even if one cannot accept the high praise bestowed on him by his admirers—M. Victor Cousin for example. From many of the vices of a favourite, Luynes was free; on the whole, his influence over Louis XIII. was rather good than bad. He was good-tempered and affectionate, though spoilt by power and terribly greedy. Clever, if not courageous, and something of a statesman, it has been said that he “anticipated in some respects the future policy of Richelieu.” He certainly saved the King from being dominated by ambitious princes, and he did his best to make obedient subjects of the Huguenots. But while he carried on war in France against them, their defeats in Germany were aggrandising Spain and the Empire and destroying that balance of power which Richelieu was to restore. If Luynes had been Richelieu, the Thirty Years War might have been stopped at its beginning.

Richelieu behaved with extraordinary discretion, even after the favourite had been removed from his path. Effacing himself in public life, he spent his time in assiduous attendance on Marie de Médicis, both at Court and in her excursions into the provinces, during one of which she paid him a visit at Coussay. To please her, they say, he learned to play the lute; and scandalous gossips found pasture in whispered tales as to the relations between the Queen and her handsome Bishop. All falsehoods, probably; but in any case, at this date his influence with her was unbounded, and as far as politics went he used it well and wisely.

In the winter of 1621-2, when Louis XIII., after the death of Luynes, turned to his mother with unusual affection, Richelieu advised the King, through her, to cease fighting his own Protestant subjects and rather, with arms or diplomacy, to check the rising, preponderating power of the House of Hapsburg. The advice was not taken. The King’s mind was now ruled by the restless Condé and by the cunning old Chancellor Brûlart de Sillery and his son, Brûlart de Puisieux. For more than two years longer, the cowardly policy and the selfish intrigues of men like these were able to keep Richelieu helpless in the background. And it was not till eight months after the death of Luynes that a new Pope, Gregory XV., consented to place the Bishop of Luçon upon the roll of Cardinals.