to Dauphiné were fully carried out. Burgundy had a complete representative system. After its estates had sate their month, a permanent council sate till the following year to see to the execution of their fiscal edicts. Richelieu, especially after the flight of the Governor Bellegarde, sought to abolish this old constitution. An insurrection was the consequence, put down indeed, but as Burgundy adjoined the foreign and hostile provinces of Franche Comté and Lorraine, severity was deemed unwise, and Burgundy was allowed, on the payment of a large sum, to preserve its estates.* Richelieu in 1630 issued similar decrees for the abolition of the estates of Provence. It produced a revolution there too, in which the ultra-Catholic parliament of Aix took the lead. The cardinal sent the Prince of Condé with an army to supersede the Duke of Guise as governor, and put down Provence. But as he was to succeed to the government, he recommended Condé not to press the Provençals too hard. They were allowed to hold assemblies of procureurs of municipalities, and even recovered their estates in 1638, on payment of a million and a half of livres. As. Languedoc, from its extent, which stretched from Valence to Montauban, and was bathed by the Rhone and Mediterranean to the foot of the Pyrenees, was the most important of the southern provinces, so were its estates. The governor, especially when assured of the adherence of this assembly, was almost a king, disposing of a large revenue independent of the crown. For upwards of half a century the Montmorencies had held this post, as often to thwart as to support the crown. On the reduction of the Huguenots in 1639, Louis the Thirteenth had introduced the esleus, or fiscal officers appointed by the crown, and redistributed the judicial power with a similar aim. The estates remonstrated and were sus * Mercure Français, tom. xvii. Caillet, Administration en France sous Richelieu, Aubery, and cotem- CHAP. XXIX. XXIX. CHAP. pended. Deep and far-spread as was thus the discontent of all classes and all provinces with Richelieu in 1630--for Britanny and Normandy were scarcely more respected than the others-still there was no concert between the scattered malcontents, and when Monsieur. set the example of flight, Bellegarde and Guise each left their governments without resistance. Richelieu caused them to be condemned to death as contumaces and their property to be confiscated. The Prince of Condé remained true to the king and cardinal, and his adherence with the body of troops committed to him held the south from breaking out into rebellion for at least that year.* * In the meantime, Richelieu's long-baffled efforts to raise up effectual resistance to the emperor had been at length crowned with success. When the Capuchin Joseph signed the treaty of Ratisbon, so unfavourable, so destructive of the cardinal's aim, fortune accomplished what the negotiators failed in. Wallenstein and the greater part of the imperial army dismissed, the Bavarian Tilly took the command of the rest, and laid siege to Magdeburg, whilst the Swedish king, having landed in Pomerania, was mustering sufficient force and supplies to meet him. A stubborn resistance was expected from Magdeburg, but an imperial party within its walls had weakened the powers of defence; and Tilly, carrying Magdeburg by assault, annihilated the population of that great Protestant city, with such ruthless barbarism and indiscriminate slaughter as aroused every Protestant heart in Germany to vengeance. Magdeburg was captured and destroyed in May, 1631. In the September following, Gustavus came up with the captor and massacrer of Magdeburg in the vicinity of Leipzig. Unlike the poddering of French, Spanish, and Italian generals and soldiers at that epoch, Hist. du Languedoc. the Swedish monarch brought his enemy to battle, and the result was the complete defeat of Tilly and the Catholic army, which left 7000 dead and 5000 captive on the field, the rest of the 40,000 flying with such precipitation that a great number of them perished by the hands of peasantry whom they had exasperated. Richelieu, however relieved by the defeat of the emperor, was now alarmed at the military ascendency of the King of Sweden, as well as by the prostration of the Duke of Bavaria and the Catholic League of Germany. He sought to procure a position of neutrality for the latter, and so divert the arms of Gustavus exclusively against the emperor. Vain attempt the true division of Germany was into Protestant and Catholic, and Richelieu could not stop the progress of Gustavus, who, reinforced by some 7000 English under the Marquis of Hamilton, followed up his victory, and defeated Tilly once more at the confluence of the Lech and Danube, which left Munich open to the northern conqueror. Richelieu, in the memoirs which he dictated or revised, affects the greatest solicitude for the Duke of Bavaria and the Catholic cause. In reality, he was well pleased to see both parties in Germany occupy and weaken and neutralise each other, which left open to him the opportunity of advancing stealthily French conquest and ascendency eastwards towards the Rhine.* The folly of the Duke of Lorraine in harbouring the king's brother, and joining his mother's intrigues with Spain to oppose the cardinal, gave the latter a fair pretext. Mustering an army, Richelieu and the king proceeded to Metz in the last months of 1631, one of their first acts being the capture of the fortress of Moyenvic, which soon brought the duke to complete submission, * Richelieu's real impartiality is pretty well shown by his subsidy of 500,000 livres to Gustavus Adolphus, and 300,000 to his antagonist the СНАР. XXIX. XXIX. CHAP. expressed in the treaty of Vic (Jan. 1632), by which he ceded Marsal, the principal of his fortresses on the side of Germany. Richelieu himself has disclosed what were his views in this direction. They were nothing less than to extend ultimately French conquest, and in the meantime French influence, to the Rhine, making the King of France protector of the ecclesiastical electorates along that river, master of Philipsburg and Coblentz, and by these means dominant over the country from Metz to the Rhine, all those who possessed estates there necessarily putting themselves under the protection of France. The Count of Nassau himself offered Homburg. This was, indeed, the great and most successful scheme of Richelieu's administration, terminating in the subjection of Lorraine and the acquisition of Alsace, although the latter was filched rather than conquered, whilst the contending factions in Germany were engaged in fierce contest with each other. Richelieu never conceived a plan, or entered upon a campaign for the furtherance of the national interests, in which he was not interrupted by the forthbreak of domestic intrigues. The Huguenots first, then rival courtiers rallying round the king's brother, or his mother, withstood him. Now not only Monsieur and the queen-mother and both branches of the House of Austria showed their hostility, but the provinces of the south were excited by the destruction of their local privileges, and alarmed at the progress of that despotism which Richelieu was rolling over those extremities of the kingdom which had not hitherto undergone it. What gave importance to this revolt in 1632 was, that Henry, Duc de Montmorenci, took the lead. He had exercised almost sovereignty in Languedoc, "having levied by his own orders," says Richelieu, "upwards of 22,000,000 of livres during the preceding twelve years." The substitution of royal taxgatherers for those which acted under the authority of the estates and the governor, was dethronement to Montmorency, who was not without other grievances. His resentment, as well as that of the queen and of Gaston, was much increased against the cardinal, by a very cruel act, perpetrated by that minister in the present year. Maréchal Marillac had been kept in close imprisonment, no proofs of treason or of any capital offence being found against him. This did not stop Richelieu, who appointed judges to try him for peculation; for, in fact, making money of his military command, as was but too customary. The first judges appointed refused to condemn him. But Richelieu found others; nay, brought court and criminal to his private residence at Ruel to intimidate the former and secure the condemnation of the latter. Under such pressure Maréchal Marillac was condemned for peculation to be beheaded, though "the proofs were not sufficient to whip a valet. But an angel," declared the maréchal, "could not have escaped such a tribunal." Not only was he condemned, but executed (May 10, 1632), the victim most manifestly of the cardinal's private vengeance.* Montmorency had shared Marillac's dislike and disapproval of the cardinal's military plans in Italy. They had joined in representing the relief of Casale, which Schomberg afterwards effected, as impossible; and neither the military nor the fiscal resources of Languedoc were employed for the king's service in the Italian campaign with the fulness and loyalty, due. These faults were more aggravated than redeemed in the cardinal's eyes by the gallantry and generalship shown by Montmorency at Veillane-a victory which had won Saluzzo for the French. * Richelieu says Marillac's condemnation was rather for the mass of his evil deeds than for any particular one. Journal, p. 47. For The duke was the last of the the end of Marillac see Mém. de СНАР. XXIX. |