Richelieu soon showed his quality and rose step by step to the highest honors, becoming in due course, First Minister of State. His success was due throughout to his prudent, far-seeing conduct and his incomparable adroitness in managing affairs. “He was so keen and watchful,” said a contemporary, “that he was never taken unawares. He slept little, worked hard, thought of everything and knew everything either by intuition or through his painstaking indefatigable spirit.” He was long viewed with suspicion and dislike by the young King, but presently won his esteem by his brilliant talents. He dazzled and compelled the admiration of all, even those opposed to him. His extraordinary genius was immediately made manifest; it was enough for him to show himself. His penetrating eye, the magnetism of his presence, his dexterity in untying knots and in solving promptly the most difficult problems, enabled him to dominate all tempers and overcome all resistance. His was a singularly persuasive tongue; he had the faculty of easily and effectually proving that he was always in the right. In a word, he exercised a great personal ascendency and was as universally feared as he was implicitly obeyed by all upon whom he imposed his authority. When he was nominated First Minister, the Venetian minister in Paris wrote to his government, “Here, humanly speaking, is a new power of a solid and permanent kind; one that is little likely to be shaken or quickly crumbled away.”
Richelieu’s steady and consistent aim was to consolidate an absolute monarchy. Determined to conquer and crush the Huguenots he made his first attack upon La Rochelle, the great Protestant stronghold, but was compelled to make terms with the Rochelais temporarily while he devoted himself to the abasement of the great nobles forever in opposition to and intriguing against the reigning sovereign. Headed by the princes of the blood, they continually resisted Marie de Medicis and engaged in secret conspiracy, making treasonable overtures to Spain or openly raising the standard of revolt at home. With indomitable courage and an extraordinary combination of daring and diplomacy, Richelieu conquered them completely. The secret of his success has been preserved in his own words, “I undertake nothing that I have not thoroughly thought out in advance; when I have once made up my mind I stick to it with unchangeable firmness, sweeping away all obstacles before me and treading them down under foot till they lie paralysed under my red robe.”
Richelieu, in thus strenuously fighting for his policy, which he conceived was in the best interests of France, made unsparing use of the weapons placed at his disposal for coercing his enemies. Foremost amongst these were the prisons of state, the Bastile, Vincennes and the rest, which he filled with prisoners, breaking them with repression, retribution, or more or less permanent removal from the busy scene. Year after year the long procession passed in through the gloomy portals, in numbers far exceeding the movement outward, for few went out except to make the short journey to the scaffold. The Cardinal’s victims were many. Amongst the earliest offenders upon whom his hand fell heavily in the very first year of his ministry, were those implicated in the Ornano-Chalais conspiracy. The object of this was to remove the King’s younger brother, Gaston, Duc d’Orleans, generally known as “Monsieur,” out of the hands of the Court and set him up as a pretender to the throne in opposition to Louis XIII. Richelieu, in his memoirs, speaks of this as “the most fearful conspiracy mentioned in history, both as regards the number concerned and the horror of the design, which was to raise their master (Monsieur) above his condition and abase the sacred person of the King.” The Cardinal himself was to have been a victim and was to be murdered at his castle of Fleury, six miles from Fontainebleau. When the plot was betrayed, the King sent a body of troops to Fleury and the Queen a number of her attendants. The conspirators were forestalled and the ringleaders arrested. The Marshal d’Ornano was taken at Fontainebleau and with him his brother and some of his closest confidants. The Marquis de Chalais, who was of the famous house of Talleyrand, was caught in the act at Fleury, to which he had proceeded for the commission of the deed. He confessed his crime. There were those who pretended at the time that the plot was fictitious, invented by Richelieu in order to get rid of some of his most active enemies. In any case, the Marshal d’Ornano died in the Bastile within three months of his arrest and it was generally suspected that he had been poisoned, although Richelieu would not allow it was other than a natural death. Chalais had been sent to Nantes, where he was put on trial, convicted, sentenced to death and eventually executed. The execution was carried out with great barbarity, for the headsman was clumsy and made thirty-two strokes with his sword before he could effect decapitation.
The two Vendômes, Caesar, the eldest, and his brother, the Grand Prior, were concerned in the Ornano-Chalais conspiracy. Caesar was the eldest son of Henri IV by Gabrielle d’Estrées, but was legitimised and created a duke by his father, with precedence immediately after the princes of the blood. Although Louis’ half-brother, he was one of his earliest opponents. After the detection of the plot he was cast into the prison of Vincennes, where he remained for four years (1626-30), but was released on surrendering the government of Brittany and accepting exile. He was absent for eleven years, but on again returning to France was accused of an attempt to poison Cardinal Richelieu and again banished until that minister’s death. He could not bring himself to submit to existing authority, and once more in France became one of the leaders of the party of the “Importants” and was involved in the disgrace of the Duc de Beaufort, his son. Having made his peace with Cardinal Mazarin in 1650, he was advanced to several offices, among others to those of Governor of Burgundy and Superintendent of Navigation. He helped to pacify Guienne and took Bordeaux. The Grand Prior, his brother, became a Knight of Malta and saw service early at the siege of Candia, where he showed great courage. He made the campaign of Holland under Louis XIV, after having been involved with Chalais, and throughout showed himself a good soldier.
Richelieu’s penalties were sometimes inflicted on other grounds than self-defense and personal animosity. The disturbers of public peace he treated as enemies of the State. Thus he laid a heavy hand on all who were concerned in affairs of honor whether death ensued or not. His own elder brother had been killed in a duel, and he abhorred a practice which had so long decimated the country. It was calculated that in one year alone four thousand combatants had perished. King Henry IV had issued the most severe edicts against it and had created a tribunal of marshals empowered to examine into and arrange all differences between gentlemen. One of these edicts of 1602, prohibiting duels, laid down as a penalty for the offense, the confiscation of property and the imprisonment of the survivors. A notorious duellist, De Bouteville, felt the weight of the Cardinal’s hand. He must have been a quarrelsome person for he fought on twenty-one occasions. After the last quarrel he retired into Flanders and was challenged by a Monsieur de Beuvron. They returned to Paris where they fought in the Place Royale, and Bussy d’Amboise, one of Beuvron’s seconds, was killed by one of De Bouteville’s. The survivors fled but were pursued and captured, with the result that De Bouteville was put upon his trial before the regular courts. He was convicted and condemned to death. All the efforts on the part of influential friends, royal personages included, to obtain pardon having proved unavailing, he suffered in the Place de Grève. The pugnacity of this De Bouteville was attributed by many to homicidal mania, and one nobleman declared that he would decline a challenge from him unless it was accompanied by a medical certificate of sanity. He had killed a number of his opponents and his reputation was such that when he established a fencing school at his residence in Paris all the young noblemen flocked there to benefit by his lessons.
Richelieu used the Bastile for all manner of offenders. One was the man Farican, of whom he speaks in his “Memoirs” as “a visionary consumed with vague dreams of a coming republic. All his ends were bad, all his means wicked and detestable.... His favorite occupation was the inditing of libellous pamphlets against the government, rendering the King odious, exciting sedition and aiming at subverting the tranquillity of the State. Outwardly a priest, he held all good Catholics in detestation and acted as a secret spy of the Huguenots.” An Englishman found himself in the Bastile for being at cross purposes with the Cardinal. This was a so-called Chevalier Montagu, son of the English Lord Montagu and better known as “Wat” Montagu, who was much employed as a secret political agent between England and France. Great people importuned the Cardinal to release Montagu. “The Duke of Lorraine,” says Richelieu, “has never ceased to beg this favor. He began with vain threats and then, with words more suitable to his position, sent the Prince of Phalsbourg to Paris for the third time to me to grant this request.” The Duke having been gratified with this favor came in person to Paris to thank the King. An entry in an English sheet dated April 20th, 1628, runs, “The Earl of Carlisle will not leave suddenly because Walter Montagu is set free from France and has arrived at our court. The King says he has done him exceeding good service.” It was Montagu who brought good news from Rochelle to the Duke of Buckingham on the very day he was assassinated. Later in October, Montagu had a conference with Richelieu as to the exchange of prisoners at Rochelle.
Richelieu’s upward progress had not been unimpeded. The Queen Mother became his bitter enemy. Marie de Medicis was disappointed in him. He had not proved the humble, docile creature she looked for in one whom she had raised so high and her jealousy intensified as his power grew. She was a woman of weak character and strong passions, easily led astray by designing favorites, as was seen in the case of the Concinis, and there is little doubt that the Maréchal d’Ancre was her lover. After his murder she was estranged from Louis XIII, but was reconciled and joined with Richelieu’s enemies in ceaselessly importuning the King to break with his too powerful minister. She was backed by Anne of Austria, the wife of Louis XIII; by “Monsieur,” the Duc d’Orleans and a swarm of leading courtiers in her efforts to sacrifice Richelieu. The conflict ended in the so-called “Day of Dupes,” when the minister turned the tables triumphantly upon his enemies. Louis had retired to his hunting lodge near Versailles to escape from his perplexities and Richelieu followed him there, obtained an audience and put his own case before the King, whom he dazzled by unveiling his great schemes, and easily regained the mastery. His enemies were beaten and like craven hounds came to lick his feet; and like hounds, at once felt the whip.
One of the first to suffer was the Queen Mother. She had no friends. Every one hated her; her son, her creatures and supporters,—and the King again sent her into exile, this time to Compiègne, where she was detained for a time. She presently escaped and left France to wander through Europe, first to Brussels, then to London and last of all to Cologne, where she died in a garret in great penury. Marie de Medicis’ had been an unhappy life. Misfortune met her on the moment she came to France, for the King, her bridegroom, who had divorced his first wife, Marguerite de Valois, in the hopes of an heir by another wife, was much disappointed when he saw Marie de Medicis. She was by no means so good looking as he had been led to believe. She was tall, with a large coarse figure, and had great round staring eyes. There was nothing softly feminine and caressing in her ways, she had no gaiety of manner and was not at all the woman to attract or amuse the King’s roving fancy,—the vert galant, the gay deceiver of a thousand errant loves. Yet he was willing to be good friends and was strongly drawn to her after the birth of the Dauphin, but was soon repelled again by her violent temper and generally detestable character. The establishment of the Jesuits in France was Marie’s doing. She was suspected of duplicity in Henry’s assassination, but the foul charge rests on no good grounds. After becoming Regent, she alienated the nobility by her favoritism and exasperated the people by her exorbitant tax levies to provide money for her wasteful extravagance and the prodigal gifts she bestowed. The one merit she possessed in common with her house was her patronage of arts and letters. She inspired the series of famous allegorical pictures, twenty-one in number, painted by Rubens, embodying the life of Marie de Medicis.
There was no love lost between the Cardinal and the Maréchal Bassompierre, who paid the penalty for being on the wrong side in the famous “Day of Dupes” and found himself committed for a long imprisonment in the Bastile. The Marshal had offended Richelieu by penetrating his designs against the nobility. When asked what he thought of the prospect of taking La Rochelle, he had answered, “It would be a mad act for us, for we shall enable the Cardinal, when he has overcome the Calvinists, to turn all his strength against our order.” It was early in 1631 that danger to his person began to threaten him. He was warned by the Duc d’Épernon that the Queen Mother, of whose party Bassompierre was, had been arrested and that others, including himself, were likely to get into trouble. The Marshal asked the Duc d’Épernon for his advice, who strongly urged him to get away, offering him at the same time a loan of fifty thousand crowns as a provision until better days came. The Marshal refused this kind offer but resolved to present himself before the King and stand his ground. He would not compromise himself by a flight which would draw suspicion down on him and call his loyalty in question. He had served France faithfully for thirty years and was little inclined now that he was fifty to seek his fortune elsewhere. “I had given my King the best years of my life and was willing to sacrifice my liberty to him, feeling sure that it would be restored on better appreciation of my loyal services.”
Bassompierre prepared for the worst like a man of the world. “I rose early next day and proceeded to burn more than six thousand love-letters received from ladies to whom I had paid my addresses. I was afraid that if arrested my papers would be seized and examined and some of these letters might compromise my old friends.” He entered his carriage and drove to Senlis where the King was in residence. Here he met the Duc de Gramont and others who told him he would certainly be arrested. Bassompierre again protested that he had nothing on his conscience. The King received him civilly enough and talked to him at length about the disagreement of the Queen Mother with Cardinal Richelieu, and then Bassompierre asked point blank whether the King owed him any grudge. “How can you think such a thing,” replied the treacherous monarch. “You know I am your friend,” and left him. That evening the Marshal supped with the Duc de Longueville and the King came in afterwards. “Then I saw plainly enough,” says Bassompierre, “that the King had something against me, for he kept his head down, and touching the strings of his guitar, never looked at me nor spoke a single word. Next morning I rose at six o’clock and as I was standing before the fire in my dressing-room, M. de Launay, Lieutenant of the Body-Guard, entered my room and said, ‘Sir, it is with tears in my eyes and with a bleeding heart that I, who, for twenty years have served under you, am obliged to tell you that the King has ordered me to arrest you.’