GROWTH OF ABSOLUTISM IN FRANCE: HENRY IV, RICHELIEU, AND MAZARIN
For the first time in many years France in 1598 was at peace. The Edict of Nantes, which in that year accorded qualified religious toleration to the Huguenots, removed the most serious danger to internal order, and the treaty of Vervins, concluded in the same year with the king of Spain, put an end to a long and exhausting foreign war. Henry IV was now free to undertake the internal reformation of his country.
Sorry, indeed, was the plight of France at the close of the sixteenth century. Protracted civil and foreign wars had produced their inevitable consequences. The state was nearly bankrupt. Country districts lay largely uncultivated. Towns were burned or abandoned. Roads were rough and neglected, and bridges in ruins. Many of the discharged soldiers turned highwaymen, pillaged farmhouses, and robbed travelers. Trade was at a standstill and the artisans of the cities were out of work. During the wars, moreover, great noblemen had taken many rights into their own hands and had acquired a habit of not obeying the king. The French crown seemed to be in danger of losing what power it had gained in the fifteenth century.
That the seventeenth century was to witness not a diminution but a pronounced increase of royal power, was due to the character of the French king at this critical juncture. Henry IV (1589-1610) was strong and vivacious. With his high forehead, sparkling eyes, smiling mouth, and his neatly pointed beard (Henri quatre), he was prepossessing in looks, while his affability, simplicity, and constant expression of interest in the welfare of his subjects earned him the appellation of "Good King Henry." His closest companions knew that he was selfish and avaricious, but that his quick decisions were likely to be good and certain to be put in force. Above all, Henry had soldierly qualities and would brook no disloyalty or disobedience.
[Sidenote: Sully]
Throughout his reign, Henry IV was well served by his chief minister, the duke of Sully, [Footnote: 1560-1641.] an able, loyal, upright Huguenot, though avaricious like the king and subject to furious fits of jealousy and temper. Appointed to the general oversight of financial affairs, Sully made a tour of inspection throughout the country and completely reformed the royal finances. He forbade provincial governors to raise money on their own authority, removed many abuses of tax- collecting, and by an honest, rigorous administration was able between 1600 and 1610 to save an average of a million livres a year. The king zealously upheld Sully's policy of retrenchment: he reduced the subsidies to artists and the grants to favorites, and retained only a small part of his army, sufficient to overawe rebellious nobles and to restore order and security throughout the realm. To promote and preserve universal peace, he even proposed the formation of a World Confederation—his so-called "Grand Design"—which, however, came to naught through the mutual jealousies and rival ambitions of the various European sovereigns. It proved to be much too early to talk convincingly of general pacifism and disarmament.
[Sidenote: Agricultural Development]
While domestic peace was being established and provision was being made for immediate financial contingencies, Henry IV and his great minister were both laboring to increase the resources of their country and thereby to promote the prosperity and contentment of the people. Sully believed that the true wealth of the nation lay in farming pursuits, and, therefore, agriculture should be encouraged even, if necessary, to the neglect of trade and industry. While the king allowed Sully to develop the farming interests, he himself encouraged the new commercial classes.
In order to promote agriculture, Sully urged the abolition of interior customs lines and the free circulation of grain, subsidized stock raising, forbade the destruction of the forests, drained swamps, rebuilt the roads and bridges, and planned a vast system of canals.
On his side, Henry IV was contributing to the wealth of the middle class. It was he who introduced silkworms and the mulberry trees, on which they feed, thereby giving an impetus to the industry which is now one of the most important in France. The beginnings of the industrial importance of Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles date from the reign of Henry IV.
The king likewise encouraged commerce. A French merchant marine was built up by means of royal bounties. A navy was started. Little by little the French began to compete for trade on the high seas at first with the Dutch, and subsequently with the English. French trading posts were established in India; and Champlain was dispatched to the New World to lay the foundations of a French empire in America. It was fortunate for France that she had two men like Henry IV and Sully, each supplementing the work of the other.
The assassination of Henry IV by a crazed fanatic in 1610 threatened for a time to nullify the effects of his labors, for supreme power passed to his widow, Marie de' Medici, an ambitious but incompetent woman, who dismissed Sully and undertook to act as regent for her nine- year-old son, Louis XIII. The queen-regent was surrounded by worthless favorites and was hated by the Huguenots, who feared her rigid Catholicism, and by the nobles, Catholic and Huguenot alike, who were determined to maintain their privileges and power.
The hard savings of Henry IV were quickly exhausted, and France once more faced a financial crisis. In this emergency the Estates-General was again convened (1614). Since the accession of Louis XI (1461), the French monarchs with their absolutist tendencies had endeavored to remove this ancient check upon their authority: they had convoked it only in times of public confusion or economic necessity. Had the Estates-General really been an effective body in 1614, it might have taken a position similar to that of the seventeenth-century Parliament in England and established constitutional government in France, but its organization and personnel militated against such heroic action. The three estates—clergy, nobles, and commoners (bourgeois)—sat separately in as many chambers; the clergy and nobles would neither tax themselves nor cooperate with the Third Estate; the commoners, many of whom were Huguenots, were disliked by the court, despised by the First and Second Estates, and quite out of sympathy with the peasants, the bulk of the French nation. It is not surprising, under the circumstances, that the session of 1614 lasted but three weeks and ended as a farce: the queen-regent locked up the halls and sent the representatives home—she needed the room for a dance, she said. It was not until the momentous year of 1789—after a lapse of 175 years—that the Estates-General again assembled.
After the fiasco of 1614, affairs went from bad to worse. Nobles and Huguenots contended between themselves, and both against the court favorites. As many as five distinct uprisings occurred. Marie de' Medici was forced to relinquish the government, but Louis XIII, on reaching maturity, gave evidence of little executive ability. The king was far more interested in music and hunting than in business of state. No improvement appeared until Cardinal Richelieu assumed the guidance of affairs of state in 1624. Henceforth, the royal power was exercised not so much by Louis XIII as by his great minister.
[Sidenote: Cardinal Richelieu]
Born of a noble family of Poitou, Armand de Richelieu (1585-1642), at the age of twenty-one had been appointed bishop of the small diocese of Luçon. His eloquence and ability as spokesman for the clergy in the fatuous Estates-General of 1614 attracted the notice of Marie de' Medici, who invited him to court, gave him a seat in the royal council, and secured his nomination as a cardinal of the Roman Church. From 1624 until his death in 1642, Richelieu was the most important man in France.
With undoubted loyalty and imperious will, with the most delicate diplomacy and all the blandishments of subtle court intrigue, sometimes with sternest and most merciless cruelty, Richelieu maintained his influence over the king and proceeded to destroy the enemies of the French crown.
[Sidenote: Richelieu's Policies]
Richelieu's policies were quite simple: (1) To make the royal power supreme in France; (2) to make France predominant in Europe. The first involved the removal of checks upon royal authority and the triumph of absolutism; the second meant a vigorous foreign policy, leading to the humiliation of the rival Habsburgs. In both these policies Richelieu was following the general traditions of the preceding century, essentially those of Henry IV, but to an exaggerated extent and with unparalleled success. Postponing consideration of general European affairs, let us first see what the great cardinal accomplished in France.
[Sidenote: Disappearance of Representative Government]
First of all, Richelieu disregarded the Estates-General. He was convinced of its futility and unhesitatingly declined to consult it. Gradually the idea became current that the Estates-General was an out- worn, medieval institution, totally unfit for modern purposes, and that official business could best—and therefore properly—be conducted, not by the representatives of the chief social classes in the nation, but by personal appointees of the king. Thus the royal council became the supreme lawmaking and administrative body in the country.
Local estates, or parliaments, continued to exist in certain of the most recently acquired provinces of France, such as Brittany, Provence, Burgundy, and Languedoc, but they had little influence except in apportioning taxes: Richelieu tampered with their privileges and vetoed many of their acts.
[Sidenote: The Royal Army]
The royal prerogative extended not only to matters of taxation and legislation, including the right to levy taxes and to make expenditures for any purpose without public accounting, but it was preserved and enforced by means of a large standing army, which received its pay and its orders exclusively from the crown. To the royal might, as well as to its right, Richelieu contributed. He energetically aided Louis XIII in organizing and equipping what proved to be the best army in Europe.
Two factions in the state aroused the cardinal's ire—one the Huguenots, and the other the nobles—for both threatened the autocracy which he was bent upon erecting. Both factions suffered defeat and humiliation at his hands.
Richelieu, though a cardinal of the Roman Church, was more politician and statesman than ecclesiastic; though living in an age of religious fanaticism, he was by no means a bigot. As we shall presently see, this Catholic cardinal actually gave military support to Protestants in Germany—for political purposes; it was similarly for political purposes that he attacked the Protestants in France.
As has already been pointed out, French Protestantism meant an influential political party as well as a religion. Since Henry IV had issued the Edict of Nantes, the Huguenots had had their own assemblies, officers, judges, and even certain fortified towns, all of which interfered with the sovereign authority and impaired that uniformity which thoughtful royalists believed to be the very cornerstone of absolutism. Richelieu had no desire to deprive the Huguenots of religious freedom, but he was resolved that in political matters they should obey the king. Consequently, when they revolted in 1625, he determined to crush them. In spite of the considerable aid which England endeavored to give them, the Huguenots were entirely subdued. Richelieu's long siege of La Rochelle, lasting nearly fifteen months, showed his forceful resolution. When the whole country had submitted, the Edict of Alais was published (1629), leaving to the Protestants freedom of conscience and of worship but depriving them of their fortifications and forbidding them to hold assemblies. Public office was still open to them and their representatives kept their judicial posts. "The honest Huguenot retained all that he would have been willing to protect with his life, while the factious and turbulent Huguenot was deprived of the means of embarrassing the government."
The repression of the nobles was a similar statesmanlike achievement, and one made in the face of redoubtable opposition. It had long been customary to name noblemen as governors of the various provinces, but the governors had gradually become masters instead of administrators: they commanded detachments of the army; they claimed allegiance of the garrisons in their towns; they repeatedly and openly defied the royal will. The country, moreover, was sprinkled with noblemen's castles or châteaux, protected by fortifications and armed retainers, standing menaces to the prompt execution of the king's orders. Finally, the noblemen at court, jealous of the cardinal's advancement and spurred on by the intrigues of the disaffected Marie de' Medici or of the king's own brother, hampered the minister at every turn. Of such intolerable conditions, Richelieu determined to be quit.
Into the ranks of noble courtiers, Richelieu struck terror. By means of spies and trickery, he ferreted out conspiracies and arbitrarily put their leaders to death. Every attempt at rebellion was mercilessly punished, no matter how exalted in rank the rebel might be. Richelieu was never moved by entreaties or threats—he was as inexorable as fate itself.
[Sidenote: Demolition of Private Fortifications ]
The cardinal did not confine his attention to noblemen at court. As early as 1626 he published an edict ordering the immediate demolition of all fortified castles not needed for defense against foreign invasion. In carrying this edict into force, Richelieu found warm supporters in peasantry and townsfolk who had long suffered from the exactions and depredations of their noble but warlike neighbors. The ruins of many a chateau throughout modern France bear eloquent witness to the cardinal's activity.
[Sidenote: Centralization of Administration]
[Sidenote: The Intendants]
Another enduring monument to Richelieu was the centralization of French administration. The great minister was tired of the proud, independent bearing of the noble governors. Without getting rid of them altogether, he checked these proud officials by transferring most of their powers to a new kind of royal officer, the intendant. Appointed by the crown usually from among the intelligent, loyal middle class, each intendant had charge of a certain district, supervising therein the assessment and collection of royal taxes, the organization of local police or militia, the enforcement of order, and the conduct of courts. These intendants, with their wide powers of taxation, police, and justice, were later dubbed, from their approximate number, the "thirty tyrants" of France. But they owed their positions solely to the favor of the crown; they were drawn from a class whose economic interests were long and well served by the royal power; and their loyalty to the king, therefore, could be depended upon. The intendants constantly made reports to, and received orders from, the central government at Paris. They were so many eyes, all over the kingdom, for an ever-watchful Richelieu. And in measure as the power of the bourgeois intendants increased, that of the noble governors diminished, until, by the eighteenth century, the offices of the latter had become largely honorary though still richly remunerative. To keep the nobles amused and in money, and thereby out of mischief and politics, became, from Richelieu's time, a maxim of the royal policy in France.
[Side Note: Richelieu's Significance]
Such, in brief, was the work of this grim figure that moved across the stage at a critical period in French history. Richelieu, more than any other man, was responsible for the assurance of absolutism in his country at the very time when England, by means of revolution and bloodshed, was establishing parliamentary government; and, as we shall soon see, his foreign policy covered France with European glory and prestige.
In person, Richelieu was frail and sickly, yet when clothed in his cardinal's red robes he appeared distinguished and commanding. His pale, drawn face displayed a firm determination and an inflexible will. Unscrupulous, exacting, and without pity, he preserved to the end a proud faith in his moral strength and in his loyalty to country and to king.
Richelieu died in 1642, and the very next year the monarch whom he had served so gloriously followed him to the grave, leaving the crown to a boy of five years—Louis XIV.
[Side Note: Minority of Louis XIV]
[Sidenote: Cardinal Mazarin]
The minority of Louis XIV might have been disastrous to France and to the royal power, had not the strong policies of Richelieu been exemplified and enforced by another remarkable minister and cardinal, Mazarin. Mazarin (1602-1661) was an Italian, born near Naples, educated for an ecclesiastical career at Rome and in Spain. In the discharge of several delicate diplomatic missions for the pope, he had acted as nuncio at Paris, where he so ingratiated himself in Richelieu's favor that he was invited to enter the service of the king of France, and in 1639 he became a naturalized Frenchman.
Despite his foreign birth and the fact that he never spoke French without a bad accent, he rose rapidly in public service. He was named cardinal and was recognized as Richelieu's disciple and imitator. From the death of the greater cardinal in 1642 to his own death in 1661, Mazarin actually governed France.
[Sidenote: Unrest of the Nobles]
Against the Habsburgs, Mazarin continued the great war which Richelieu had begun and brought it to a successful conclusion. In domestic affairs, he encountered greater troubles. The nobles had naturally taken umbrage at the vigorous policies of Richelieu, from which Mazarin seemed to have no thought of departing. They were strengthened, moreover, by a good deal of popular dislike of Mazarin's foreign birth, his avarice, his unscrupulous plundering of the revenues of the realm for the benefit of his own family, and his tricky double-dealing ways.
[Sidenote: The Fronde]
The result was the Fronde, [Footnote: Probably so called from the name of a street game played by Parisian children and often stopped by policemen.] the last attempt prior to the French Revolution to cast off royal absolutism in France. It was a vague popular protest coupled with a selfish reaction on the part of the influential nobles: the pretext was Mazarin's interference with the parlement of Paris.
[Sidenote: The Parlements]
The parlements were judicial bodies [Footnote: There were thirteen in the seventeenth century.] which tried important cases and heard appeals from lower courts. That of Paris, being the most eminent, had, in course of time, secured to itself the right of registering royal decrees—that is, of receiving the king's edicts in formal fashion and entering them upon the statute books so that the law of the land might be known generally. From making such a claim, it was only a step for the parlement of Paris to refuse to register certain new edicts on the ground that the king was not well informed or that they were in conflict with older and more binding enactments. If these claims were substantiated, the royal will would be subjected to revision by the parlement of Paris. To prevent their substantiation, both Louis XIII and Louis XIV held "beds of justice"—that is, appeared in person before the parlement, and from their seat of cushions and pillows declared their will regarding the new edict and directed that it be promulgated. There were amusing scenes when the boy-king, at the direction of Mazarin, gave orders in his shrill treble to the learned lawyers and grave old judges.
Egged on by seeming popular sympathy and no doubt by the contemporaneous political revolution in England, the parlement of Paris at length defied the prime minister. It proclaimed its immunity from royal control; declared the illegality of any public tax which it had not freely and expressly authorized; ordered the abolition of the office of intendant; and protested against arbitrary arrest or imprisonment. To these demands, the people of Paris gave support— barricades were erected in the streets, and Mazarin, whose loyal army was still fighting in the Germanies, was obliged temporarily to recognize the new order. Within six months, however, sufficient troops had been collected to enable him to overawe Paris and to annul his concessions.
[Sidenote: Suppression of the Fronde]
[Sidenote: Triumph of Absolutism in France]
Subsequent uprisings, engineered by prominent noblemen, were often more humorous than harmful. To be sure, no less a commander than the great Condé, one of the chief heroes of the Thirty Years' War, took arms against the Cardinalists, as Mazarin's party was called, but so slight was the aid which he received from the French people that he was speedily driven from his country and joined the Spanish army. The upshot of the Fronde was (1) the nobility were more discredited than ever; (2) the parlement was forbidden to devote attention to political or financial affairs; (3) Paris was disarmed and lost the right of electing its own municipal officers; (4) the royal authority was even stronger than under Richelieu because an unsuccessful attempt had been made to weaken it. Henry IV, Richelieu, and Mazarin had made straight the way for the despotism of Louis XIV.