CHAP. XXIX. FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF RICHELIEU'S ADMINISTRATION 1624 TO 1643. THE administration of Cardinal Richelieu is a period to which the French almost invariably look with predilection and pride. The cleverness and good fortune with which he maintained his power, the energy with which he successfully directed it, make them forget the violence, the bloodthirstiness, and treachery which accompanied them. To have extended the frontier of the monarchy, castigated and crushed its nobles, are merits which, with the majority of Frenchmen of the present age, would obliterate any defect. But more impartial observers cannot fail to ask whether the unmitigated despotism which the great minister established for the crown over all that remained of independence in class or institutions, was necessary for what he aimed at and achieved. When Richelieu assumed the reins of power, he no doubt found, as he expressed it, "the Huguenots forming part of the state, the grandees forgetting they were subjects, and each personage measuring his pretensions by his audacity." Yet was it impossible, by the aid of that unexampled respect and authority which had accrued to the majesty and person of the monarch, to have reduced the Huguenots to be peaceable citizens, and the nobles to serve in upholding the state, rather than in preying CHAP. CHAP. upon and disturbing it, by establishing a government of law and order, not of terror and arbitrary rule? XXIX. The truth, indeed, and the true exculpation of Richelieu, is, that he by no means premeditated, from the first, the great and bad acts of his administration; neither did he acquire at once that fulness of power which could alone enable him to follow out a scheme of policy exclusively his own. It has been the error of Richelieu's historians to represent him as from the very outset master of the destinies of France. In order to heroise the great statesman-sufficiently a hero of himself, and within the bounds of truth-he has been depicted as a minister of such irresistible capacity and will, and Louis the Thirteenth as a monarch so feeble and so null, that the cardinal comes forward as the exclusive agent, the political divinity of the time; absolute where he had his way, and actuated by profound and wise dissimulation, where he seemed to swerve or turn aside. His character for spirit and sincerity is thus always sacrificed to the desire of upholding his sagacity; and instead of being allowed to contemplate him as a man, we are asked to worship him as a demon. Singular to say, his own memoirs, written in a great measure or dictated by himself, take the same view. They never doubt the cardinal's power, or excuse his tergiversation or treachery, his abandonment of friend or of purpose by the plea of his being overruled, and not having been really able to do more. The memoirs of Richelieu never question his omnipotence and omniscience; and yet the great minister was neither all-powerful nor all-wise. Louis the Thirteenth was no cipher, but, on the contrary, a very exigent master, and very often an extremely wilful one; and although this does not so much appear in the French memoirs of the time, it is fully delineated and thrown into relief in the copious correspondence of English envoys and agents at the court of France, which are to be found in the collections of our State CHAP. Paper Office. If the foreign policy of Richelieu was thus, in the first years of his rule, modified by the king and the clergy, his domestic policy was the result of the terrible enemies which assailed, and the obstructions which beset, him. The court and its principal personages, especially queens and princes, the female sex being foremost, became his antagonists. Even these, to whom he was indebted for his advancement, as the queen mother, and those who owed the recovery of their honours to him-such as Schomberg-formed no exceptions. He thrust aside every one, and deprived the entire upper class of its remaining influence and openings to ambition. Nor could he call the middle class to his support. A century's civil war had developed bigotry and ferocity, even amongst citizens. Mutual exclusion or murder had grown to be the only law; and whilst it was found necessary to suppress the privileges of the Huguenot towns, it was still more requisite to supersede those of the Catholics, whose intolerance was ferocious. De The despotic tendencies of Richelieu's administration were thus produced as much by the circumstances of the time as by any political theory of his own. spotic monarchy, already erect and in growth, was strengthened by his prostration of all that could oppose it. But the age went with the efforts of the minister. The French of that day were incapable of appreciating the heroism of the Hollanders, or the stern love of civil and religious liberty which began to animate the English. Their regards were turned in an opposite direction, towards the south, and looked to Spain for the ideal of dignity, chivalry, and grandeur. Thither Corneille went in search of his heroes and his poetic sentiment; and thither were attracted the general admiration and sympathies of Louis the Thirteenth XXIX. XXIX. CHAP. and his court: even Protestantism came to be looked on by the French of that day not merely as a heresy but as a vulgar failure. The regards of France were turned in every respect, in politics, in religion, and in taste, towards the past; whilst those men of northern countries, who boldly and generously looked forwards towards the future of political freedom and intellectual development, were considered more as foolish visionaries than as they were the great practical statesmen, historians, and poets of the time. The ideas which inspired the imagination and quickened the intellects of English or of Dutch, never entered into the head of Richelieu. Yet he is represented in his earlier years as dreaming and shadowing forth, in company with his friend Du Tremblay, afterwards the capucin Père Joseph, the scheme and scope of their future life.* Neither looked forward to being aught but politicians. Devotion and asceticism were indeed not unknown to the age-it was towards the close of François de Sales' life and that of Sœur Therèse, St. Vincent de Paul advancing to succeed them. It was the age of St. Cyran, and of the revival of a religion of sentiment in Port Royal. But Richelieu and Père Joseph felt an altogether secular vocation. Machiavel shared their studies with the Bible, and to immortalise themselves as statesmen and heroes rather than as saints was their ruling passion and idea. To endow their country with freedom or oppose its mental or political thraldom, could scarcely have entered into the views of young men bred to the Roman Catholic Church. The meaner and the narrower aim of making themselves and their country powerful formed their peculiar aspiration. It was scarcely to be believed that Richelieu could enjoy less than absolute power, considering the state which he loved to assume, and the arrogant pride in * Mémoires de Fontenay-Mareuil. XXIX. which he indulged. He found it necessary, perhaps, CHAP. to assume this tone towards the proud aristocracy which envied and sought to humiliate him. No sooner was he nominated of the council, than he signified his right to take precedence, as cardinal, of chancellor and constable.* It was Sixtus Quintus throwing away his crutches the moment he became pope. If La Vieuville was startled at such boldness, the Spanish ambassador was still more surprised. This personage had pressed successfully, as long as the Brularts were in power, that the court of France should withdraw its alliance and its regiments from the Dutch.† As La Vieuville hesitated, the Spaniards hoped better things from the cardinal. Richelieu observed to them, that to offend the Dutch would be to prompt them to aid the Rochellois. The ambassador offered his master's fleet to reduce La Rochelle. But the cardinal struck into a far other line of policy. Lord Holland had come before Easter to negotiate a marriage between Charles of England and Henrietta, Louis the Thirteenth's sister. It was the gravity of refusing such an offer, the difficulties attending, and the wariness requisite on accepting it, that had chiefly necessitated the admission of Richelieu to the council. He was decidedly for the marriage, and for accompanying it with stipulations in favour of the English Catholics, less for their sake than to save appearances with the Pope and his party. Such an argument was indeed necessary in order to procure the requisite dispensation from Rome. Whilst he sent Father Bruille thither on this errand, Richelieu arranged a treaty with England for aiding the Dutch, then sorely pressed by Spinola. Before Richelieu entered the council, Mansfeldt had no hope of inducing the French court to aid him. No sooner did that event take place, than negotiations commenced with the * Mémoires de Brienne, Papiers A. Imp. Arch. d'Etat de Richelieu. † His letters, Simancas Papers. Memoirs of Fontenay-Mareuil. |