Cardinal de Richelieu

In the brilliant first chapter of Richelieu’s Testament Politique, “Succincte Narration de toutes les grandes Actions du Roi,” written not long before his death, he reminds Louis XIII. of the circumstances under which he took office in 1624; when “the Huguenots shared the State with your Majesty, the great nobles behaved as if they were not your subjects, and the powerful governors of provinces as if they were independent sovereigns.... Foreign alliances were despised, private interests preferred to the public good; in a word, the dignity of the Royal Majesty was lowered to such a degree, through the fault of those who had then the chief management of your affairs, that it had almost ceased to exist.”

“I promised your Majesty,” he continues, “to use all my endeavours and all the authority that you might be pleased to give me, to ruin the Huguenot party, to abase the pride of the nobles, to bring all your subjects back to their duty, and to exalt your name to its proper place among Foreign Nations. I represented that for the attainment of these happy ends, your entire confidence was necessary to me.”

The Cardinal had that confidence, without which indeed he could have done nothing. Experience had taught him that however low “the Royal Majesty” might have fallen, it was and would remain the centre of power, the incarnation of France. He was therefore resolved that his influence with the King should be personal, as well as political. He had long and thoroughly studied the strange, shy, gloomy, conscientious young man of four-and-twenty, on whom his own fate and that of the nation depended. He knew that Louis was quite capable of thinking and judging for himself, and he made full use not only of his personal magnetism, but of all the clever political argument which his genius suggested. Louis was convinced—and the conviction went on deepening with years—that his own honour and the well-being of his kingdom were safe in the hands of the new Minister, so frail, keen, brilliant, and superbly sure of himself. That the King ever came to love Richelieu is hard to believe, considering all the past, in spite of affectionate letters; but he certainly admired and trusted him.

The acceptance of the English marriage for Madame Henriette Marie of France was Richelieu’s first step in the way of return to Henry IV.’s foreign policy. The idea of an English alliance, of course, was not originally his. Long before Henry’s youngest child was born, a marriage had been suggested between one of her elder sisters and Henry, Prince of Wales. At the same time, Louis the Dauphin was to have been betrothed to Princess Elizabeth, James the First’s eldest daughter—a strange destiny for the Protestant heroine, the “Queen of Hearts,” “th’Eclipse and Glory of her kind!” But Henry’s liking for England seems to have cooled considerably as time went on, and his latest political turn, doubtfully and unwillingly made, was in the direction of the Spanish marriages brought about by Marie de Médicis. As for Henriette Marie, only six months old when her father died, he had carelessly promised her hand to the young son of his cousin the Comte de Soissons. He would probably have broken this promise. The Queen-Regent had no scruples in doing so, to the rage and disappointment of Monsieur le Comte.

The present negotiations in their earlier stages were not Richelieu’s work. He was not in power in 1620, when Luynes, a poor diplomatist, tried to turn the mind of the English King towards an alliance with France rather than with Spain; nor in 1623, when the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Buckingham, those two “venturous knights” lingering incognito in Paris on their way to Madrid, witnessed a ballet at the Louvre in which Princess Henriette, now thirteen years old, was dancing. It was afterwards said that Charles fell in love with the graceful little lady on that occasion, so that his failure to capture the Infanta of Spain troubled him little personally. As to Buckingham, who with all his faults and frivolities had some of the ideas of a statesman, he was already inclined to the French alliance, seeing in it the one means of defending the foreign Protestants and balancing the power of Spain. Through the winter of 1623-4, envoys of more or less dignity were passing between London and Paris, and the marriage was talked of openly. All this time, no doubt, Richelieu was in favour of it, and his influence, as the Queen-mother’s chief adviser, set that way; but long delays dragged out the affair, even after the coming of the English Ambassadors Extraordinary, Lord Holland and Lord Carlisle. The chief difficulty, as with Spain, was the religious question. La Vieuville’s weakness as to this, in Richelieu’s opinion, nearly wrecked the negotiations. After he himself became a Minister in April, there was no more danger that France would, in Carlisle’s words, “be ridden with a discreet high hand.” The delays were of Richelieu’s causing, and the “high hand” was that of France. He meant to oppose Spain and the Empire and to assist—with discretion—the German and Dutch Protestants; but he also meant the Catholic Church to be honoured and protected in England and triumphant in France. In August, when he had arrived at supreme power, the English ambassadors found that there was no more dallying and giving way. If they wanted the alliance, they must accept the conditions, and very stringent these were. By the treaty of November 1624, subject to the Pope’s most unwillingly granted dispensation, Madame Henriette was to go to England with an establishment of French Catholics, including a bishop and twenty-eight priests, and was to have a “large chapel” in every one of her residences; while all imprisoned English Catholics were to be released, all confiscations of their property reversed, and safety and toleration assured them for the future. Louis XIII. and Richelieu had to consent that these last articles should be secret, since the King of England declared it impossible to present them to his Parliament.

Another difficult affair that called for Richelieu’s management was that of the Valtelline.

The Val Tellina, rich in vineyards, through which the river Adda, descending from its mountain source near Bormio, runs down its stony bed to fall into the Lake of Como, had long been a bone of contention for the Powers. It belonged to the Grison Leagues, old allies of France, and the first difficulties arose when its Catholic inhabitants rebelled against the oppressions of their Protestant masters. This was in 1620. On a Sunday long remembered the Protestants of the valley were massacred. Then a Spanish army came up from Milan to stand by the Catholics in their struggle with the enraged Grisons. The Thirty Years War was already two years old, and the Val Tellina was of European importance as the best and almost the only passage for armies between the Milanese and the Tyrol. Here the Emperor and the King of Spain could join hands, much to the disadvantage of the Protestant powers and of France. Naturally therefore the Spaniards took possession of the valley and its strongholds, and the Grison Leagues resisted them in vain.

France interfered, but only in the way of diplomacy. By the Treaty of Madrid, in 1621, the new Spanish forts were to be razed and the valley restored to the Grisons, who promised amnesty and toleration. But this treaty was not carried into effect. Louis XIII. was too deeply engaged in fighting his own Protestants to undertake the defence of Protestants in Switzerland, and France held aloof under her weak Ministers while the Archduke Leopold swooped down upon the Grisons and once more deprived them of the Val Tellina, besides forcing them to surrender to Austria the Engadine and other districts.

Still France hesitated, and it was only the strong remonstrances of the Duke of Savoy, the Venetian ambassador, and the Constable de Lesdiguières—himself a converted Huguenot—who saw the valley made an armed highway for the enemies of France, Venice, and Savoy, that brought Louis to insist on the carrying out of the Treaty of Madrid. In the winter of 1622-3—Richelieu being in the background, and advising the King through Marie de Médicis, to the displeasure of the Brûlarts—the three Powers made a league to this end, agreeing to raise an army of forty thousand men.

The valley was too precious to be easily renounced by Spain, and yet she did not wish to fight France and Savoy. Philip IV. and his Ministers found a way out by calling Pope Gregory XV. to the rescue, and the warlike ardour of France was easily cooled. The Treaty of Madrid was laid aside, and Louis XIII. consented that the fortresses of the Valtelline should be placed in the hands of the Pope, pending their demolition and a new arrangement of the whole affair. It was understood that the Spaniards and Austrians would no longer pretend to any rights over the valley, and that all foreign occupation would cease in three months’ time.

Nothing of the sort happened. Gregory XV. was succeeded by Urban VIII. in the summer of 1623. When, after a long delay, the new Pope invited Spain to fulfil her engagements, she declined absolutely. The free passage of the Valtelline for her troops was a military advantage not to be given up. The Pope did not insist: the action of surrendering the Valtelline, with its Catholic population, to the tender mercies of the Protestant Grisons, seemed to him wicked and impious.

This was the state of things in the autumn of 1624, when Cardinal de Richelieu came into his own. There were surprises in store both for the Pope and for Spain. Philip IV. and his Ministers had little fear of France; the policy of his royal brother-in-law had as yet been anything but energetic. Urban VIII. and the rest of the Catholic world found it hard to believe that a Cardinal would fight against Rome.

The Pope was asked, in a polite but peremptory fashion, either to destroy the fortresses or to deliver them back to Spain, with whom France would then deal direct; and in any case to withdraw his troops at once from the valley. He temporised and negotiated in Spain’s favour. Richelieu’s patience was soon exhausted. The early winter saw Switzerland overrun by French troops under the Marquis de Cœuvres, who drove the Austrians back into the Tyrol, swooped down by Poschiavo on Tirano, and in a few weeks’ time had taken all the forts and driven the papal troops out of the Valtelline.

In the course of the same winter Richelieu took advantage of a quarrel between the Duke of Savoy and the Republic of Genoa to support the Duke with an army under Lesdiguières, aided by a Dutch fleet, in an attack on Genoese territory. Richelieu had indeed no intention of conquering Genoa or of strengthening Savoy; but the Republic was Spain’s richest and most useful ally, and such an attack could not fail to harass her terribly while she was losing her position in the Valtelline, and to weaken her power in Italy.

At this crisis in foreign affairs discontent at home rose furious, and might have wrecked a smaller man. Richelieu found himself suddenly beset with a swarm of enemies, private and public. The campaign in favour of the Swiss Protestants, the strong opposition to Rome and to Spain, enraged society and the Church; and while this storm was only beginning to grumble, the French Huguenots broke out into sudden, most untimely rebellion.

The Treaty of Montpellier had left them discontented. Their last war had ended, in the autumn of 1622, with submissions and renunciations hard to be borne by so proud and independent a party. If the King was bound to observe the Edict of Nantes, which assured them toleration, they, on their side, were forced to dismantle their fortifications, and to cease from all assemblies not strictly religious. Two strong places only, La Rochelle and Montauban, were left in their hands. The Duc de Rohan, now their chief leader—the old Duc de Bouillon died in 1623—was deprived of his provincial governments, though indemnified by smaller posts and large sums of money. Also the King promised the destruction of Fort Louis, built by him to command the entrance to the harbour of La Rochelle. This last article of the treaty was not carried out: hence great displeasure in the Protestant camp.

In the eyes of some politicians, notably the Pope’s Nuncio, the Peace of Montpellier, with its concessions to rebel subjects, was somewhat disgraceful to the King of France. Richelieu was of the same opinion, to judge by his own words. But he was too wise not to let the sleeping dogs of the kingdom lie. Civil war was at all times the last thing he desired; and at this moment, with two foreign campaigns on his hands,—campaigns against the great enemies of Protestantism—the active disloyalty of the Duc de Rohan moved him to high indignation.

Writing on January 12, 1625, to M. de la Ville-aux-Clercs, Ambassador Extraordinary in London—employed, with the Marquis d’Effiat, in the final arrangements for the royal marriage—Richelieu says:

“You know how the Huguenots have cut out work for us, sending ships to sea and seizing the Isle of Ré.... Never was so bad an action as this of the Antichrist brothers, who, seeing the King at war for the interests and dignity of the Crown, take up arms to trouble the feast.”

To the French ambassador at Rome—M. de Marquemont, Archbishop of Lyons and afterwards Cardinal—Richelieu writes on January 27:

“The news you have heard of the Huguenots is only too true: incited by the devil or others equally bad, they have shown their evil will by a surprise entry into the Port of Blavet, landing with cannon, with which they battered the fort for two days.... The King has news that, the whole province hurrying against them, they have already re-embarked in order to escape, and are carrying off two or three ships of M. de Nevers, which were in the harbour.”

The “frères antichristi” were Henry Duc de Rohan and his brother Benjamin, Duc de Soubise. They were the two actively distinguished leaders who remained to the Huguenot party: Le Plessis-Mornay was dead; the Duc de Lesdiguières had changed his religion and become Constable of France; the Marquis de la Force, a brave and very provincial old soldier, and Gaspard de Coligny, Duc de Châtillon, held loyally to the Peace of Montpellier, and each accepted a Marshal’s bâton from the King; the new Duc de Bouillon was content to watch events from his north-eastern citadel of Sedan.

Thus the interior peace of France was largely in the hands of the brothers Rohan, of whom the younger was a firebrand, an adventurer, never happy unless employed in some foolhardy enterprise, though capable, on occasion, of running away; one of those restless spirits to whom religion meant opposition to law and authority; the very type of the fighting Huguenot, robber on land and pirate by sea. Such men, to whom nothing was sacred, were indeed to be found under both religious banners, one and all the opponents of royalty and of Richelieu.

Henry, first Duc de Rohan, was a different kind of person. A sincere Protestant, he carried out in his life the stern morality of his creed. He had a genius for war, wrote brilliantly on tactics, but was a diplomat as well as a soldier, and those who knew him best saw in that thoughtful character as much personal ambition as religious conscience. Both brothers were influenced by their ancestry. They were descended from the old Kings of Navarre through Isabeau, daughter of Jean d’Albret; and if the sons of Henry IV. died childless, which seemed not unlikely, Henry de Rohan was the next heir to the kingdom of Navarre. He had been acknowledged as such, in his youth, by Henry IV. What the Spaniards had left of that kingdom was now united to the crown of France. Thus the Duke may very well have seen in himself a possible pretender, a rival to Condé and the Bourbons, at a dreamed-of moment when the strongest would win.

And his mother, Catherine de Parthenay-Soubise, was not the woman to discourage such lifelong fancies in her sons. Fairy blood, that of the Lusignans, ran in her veins; “grande rêveuse,” her absence of mind and many oddities were the talk of Paris; her favourite vision was that of the Duc de Nevers and Père Joseph, a crusade against the Turks. We are told that she was not pleased when Henry IV., whom she disliked, made her eldest son a Duke, her husband being the eleventh Viscount of his name. According to the proud old family motto, that name alone made its bearer a King’s equal.

Madame de Rohan had more reason to be discontented at her son’s marriage, arranged by Henry, with Marguerite de Béthune, daughter of the Duc de Sully, then a mere child. They were married in the Protestant temple at Charenton, and the story goes that the famous and waggish minister Du Moulin asked aloud, when the little girl in her white frock was led up to him—“Do you present this child to be baptised?” The white robe of innocence did not long suit the Duchesse de Rohan, and never had a good man a worse wife. Very pretty, attractive and clever, she led a life worthier of the Valois Court than of the fine old Huguenot houses of Sully and Rohan. Not even Madame de Chevreuse, herself a Rohan by birth, was more free of moral restraint. The Duc de Rohan, concerned with greater matters, seemed superbly unconscious of his wife’s love-affairs, and turned away coolly from the shocked pastors who tried to enlighten him. In a political sense, they were one. Whenever her husband needed her help, Madame de Rohan sent her lovers to the right-about, plotted for him, followed him in his campaigns. In the winter of 1625, when the Duc de Rohan was trying to support his brother’s naval raid by a revolt in Languedoc, Aubery describes how “the Duchesse de Rohan his wife acted with no less vigour, and, as if it were her design to throw terror into vulgar minds, travelled often by night with torches, in a mourning coach drawn by eight black horses.”

“Suscités par le diable ou quelques autres qui ne valent pas mieux.” No doubt the Cardinal had accurate knowledge of the influences, diabolical or other, which had brought about the Huguenot rising at this awkward moment. It was partly the work of the angry people of La Rochelle, who saw their town perpetually threatened by royal forts on land and their harbour watched by royal ships at sea. They counted on the help of the Protestant powers, England and Holland, to make a favourable bargain with the King’s government, already entangled in the Swiss and Genoese campaigns. And they were backed up in a quarter which might well have been unexpected. The money that provided Soubise with ships came from Spain. Rohan and he, more than once treating secretly with the enemies of France, may not have deserved Richelieu’s epithet of “Antichristi,” but were certainly anti-patriotic.

As the Cardinal wrote to the ambassadors, the Duc de Soubise, not content with seizing the Isle of Ré and thus commanding La Rochelle, had sailed north and pounced on the harbour of Blavet, on the Brittany coast, at the mouth of the river below Hennebon. The harbour had been fortified by Louis XIII. in the former civil wars, and was known as Port Louis. Six battleships were now lying there, five of which did not belong to the King, but had been lent him by the Duc de Nevers. Soubise took the town and the ships—including the famous great Vierge, of eighty guns—and attacked the castle, which held out long enough for the Duc de Vendôme, governor of Brittany, to come to the rescue. Soubise then escaped to sea, but with difficulty, carrying four of his prizes with him; and sailing like a bold pirate southward, taking the island of Oléron as a base for his operations, became a terror to vessels of war or merchandise all along the coast. Later on he stormed up the Gironde in support of the Duc de Rohan, who had already set Guienne and Languedoc in a blaze.

All this trouble, arising at such an unwelcome moment, caused terrible agitation among the King’s councillors. Most of them, says Richelieu, were “si éperdus,” that they saw no choice but between immediate peace with Spain and submission to all the Huguenot demands. He himself would have no such craven yielding to the storm. With little slackening of energy in the Swiss and Genoese campaigns, he set to work to crush the revolt at home, acting on the medical maxim that a small internal injury is more to be feared than one greater and more painful, but external only.

His understanding with England and Holland now bore some fruit. Their statesmen, less consistent than their populations, did not refuse to support him against his rebels, in spite of their religion. England, already on the edge of war with Spain, sent eight ships to the help of the French Government; the Dutch fleet was diverted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and twenty French ships made up a fleet of fifty or sixty sail, commanded in chief by Duke Henry de Montmorency, High Admiral of France. Richelieu had not much faith in this young man, the late Constable’s only son and the Princesse de Condé’s brother—one of the handsomest and boldest of the fierce order that the Cardinal meant to subdue. But as far as Montmorency was concerned the time of vengeance was not yet. He and the Dutch Admiral, after a long fight with Soubise on the sea, scattered his fleet, took the islands of Ré and Oléron, and came very near to capture La Rochelle itself.

Here Richelieu held his hand. He was not yet ready for that great siege, or for the final crushing of the Protestant power in France.

On May 11, when the Huguenot revolt was in full swing, Princess Henriette, low of stature, with lovely black eyes and obstinate mouth, was married by proxy at Notre Dame to the new King of England. A high stage was set up outside the west doors of the cathedral, and on this the ceremony was performed, after the pattern of the wedding of Henry IV. and Marguerite de Valois: a Protestant prince could not be married within the walls. Here may have lain some foretaste of sadness for her who was to be known as la Reine Malheureuse, though she was ready, with strong religious faith, to accept the almost missionary character of Queen of a heretic country, an Esther for her own people. But the tones of warning were silent that day. She had not even received the letter in which Marie de Médicis, inspired by the Père de Bérulle—not by Richelieu, though he claims that credit in his Memoirs—laid down in eloquent sentences the duties of her new life. For the bride of fifteen all was joy and festival. King Charles’s proxy was Claude, Duc de Chevreuse, of royal blood, a younger son of Henry le Balafré and brother of Charles, Duc de Guise. He was one of the handsomest and most splendid of Louis XIII.’s courtiers, and his famous wife, the widow of Luynes, Queen Anne’s favourite lady, possessed all the magnificent confiscated jewellery of the unlucky Maréchale d’Ancre. This gorgeous pair were to escort the young Queen to England.

After the ceremony, at which the Duc de Chevreuse acted his part of a Protestant prince to admiration, a royal banquet was held in the hall of the Archbishop’s palace, then close to the cathedral.

“There were bonfires in all the streets of Paris,” writes Richelieu, “and lights in the windows, which turned night into brilliant day. The Cardinal, who with such pains and prudence had brought this alliance to a happy end, feeling obliged to show his contentment, which exceeded that of all others, presented their Majesties and the Court with a supper and fireworks which were worthy of the magnificence of France.”

The Cardinal’s high contentment did not last long. At the moment there were reasons for it: slight hopes, which soon faded, of a swift end to the revolt; the arrival of the Pope’s nephew and legate, Cardinal Barberini, to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the Valtelline affair. Then all was upset, in Richelieu’s view, by the descent on Paris of the Duke of Buckingham.

Ostensibly, that great personage came as his master’s special representative, to fetch home Charles’s Queen. In Paris “his Person and Presence was wonderfully admired and esteemed” ... “he out-shined,” as Lord Clarendon tells us, “all the bravery that Court could dress itself in, and over-acted the whole Nation in their own most peculiar Vanities.”

Cardinal de Richelieu’s “pains and prudence” had not been in order to the satisfying of this gentleman, who unluckily ruled both fashion and politics in England, and he was by no means disposed to make peace or war at Buckingham’s bidding. For the Duke’s visit was far from being one of mere courtesy. He had two political ends in view: first, to defeat the Pope’s legate and to keep France at war with Spain; second, to make so close an alliance with France that she would be bound to fight for the restoration of the Elector Palatine to his dominions. Richelieu would have none of this state of bondage. Louis XIII., led by him, stood firm and independent. He would accept peace with Spain when he judged it advisable, and he would not throw himself into the war in Germany, except by allowing Count Mansfeldt, on the Protestant side, to be reinforced by a couple of thousand French horse at the expense of those who employed them. This concession, which does not sound great, was made with the view of keeping England in a good temper, at least so long as the King of France had his Huguenot rebels to contend with.

Buckingham pressed for peace in that direction, but was answered, with sufficient haughtiness, that in the interest of the King his master he ought to be silent. “For no prince,” said Richelieu, “should assist, even by words, the rebellious subjects of another.”

Buckingham promised, swaggered, threatened a little. He would send a hundred ships to ravage the coast of Spain, and would land an army of 15,000 men in Flanders, if King Louis would supply 6000 cavalry. He would conquer Artois and make a present of it to France. But if the French received these offers coldly, England would seek the friendship of Spain and recover the Palatinate by treaty.

To which Richelieu replied that it was for the English to consider whether it would be for their advantage to send a fleet to Spain and an army to Flanders; that his King advised them to think well beforehand whether these would be the best means of recovering the Palatinate. If the same result could be gained by treaty, he advised them to prefer the latter course. As to the polite offer of Artois, the King of France had no wish for conquests, and in marrying his sister to the King of England desired no acquisition but his friendship.

Between the lines of the Memoirs it is easy to read Richelieu’s scornful dislike of the splendid upstart who ruled England and tried to play the game of politics with him; a dislike which deepened into distrust and uneasiness later, when Buckingham’s cause for quarrel with the French government had become that of a passionate, disappointed man rather than that of a politician, however foolhardy.

The story of Henrietta’s progress to Calais has often been told; a story in which the interest quite leaves Charles’s little bride to centre itself round the beautiful young Queen of France and the love-affair in which Buckingham, at least, was desperately in earnest. Her husband’s unkind neglect might have given the Queen every excuse, even if her dearest friend, Madame de Chevreuse, had not been a standing example of the morals favoured by society. It is certain that Anne was strongly attracted by the great charmer of his age; but religion and Spanish dignity, not to mention the care of her elder ladies and the watchfulness of the Court, were a sufficient protection. Only the most notorious scandal-mongers dared to hint otherwise.

Lord Clarendon’s very discreet account of the affair sets forth plainly the political result of Buckingham’s anger.

“In his Embassy in France ... he had the Ambition to fix his Eyes upon, and to dedicate his most violent Affection to, a Lady of a very sublime Quality; Insomuch as when the King had brought the Queen his Sister as far as he meant to do, and delivered her into the hands of the Duke to be by him conducted into England; the Duke, in his Journey, after the departure of that Court, took a resolution once more to make a visit to that great Lady, which he believ’d he might do with much privacy. But it was so easily discover’d, that provision was made for his Reception; and if he had pursued his Attempt, he had been without doubt Assassinated; of which he had only so much notice, as serv’d him to decline the Danger. But he swore, in the instant, ‘that he would See and Speak with that Lady, in Spight of the Strength and Power of France.’ And from the time that the Queen arriv’d in England, he took all the ways he could to Undervalue and Exasperate that Court and Nation, by causing all those who fled into England from the justice and displeasure of that King, to be receiv’d and entertain’d here, not only with ceremony and security, but with bounty and magnificence; and the more extraordinary the Persons were, and the more notorious their King’s displeasure was towards them (as at that time there were very many Lords and Ladies in those circumstances) the more respectfully they were receiv’d, and esteem’d. He omitted no opportunity to Incense the King against France, and to dispose him to assist the Hugonots, whom he likewise encourag’d to give their King some trouble....”

Among these “extraordinary Persons” was the Duc de Soubise, who fled to the English coast after his defeat at sea and remained in England, welcome alike to lords and commons; doing his best the while to shake down the already tottering friendship between Charles I. and his royal French brother-in-law.