Armand de Richelieu was such a bishop; and the horror of these early experiences may partly explain the Minister’s terrible severity, many years later, towards Urbain Grandier, the unworthy priest who was accused of bewitching the Ursuline nuns of Loudun.

During his residence, from 1609, with intervals, to 1614, Richelieu threw all his young strength into the labour of civilising and christianising Bas-Poitou. Travelling into every corner of the province, he preached, confirmed, scolded, advised, converted. Great and small had to listen to his admonitions. His passion for order and discipline brought new and amazing experiences to a parish clergy which had lived as it listed, idle, drunken, immoral, in the happy delusion that no one would ever interfere. Richelieu interfered to some purpose.

One of his chief objects was to get the appointment of the curés into his own hands. Many livings—if they could be called so—were in the gift of private persons, subject to an episcopal consent which was never refused: others belonged to abbeys, and this often meant, in the end, the patronage of some prince or noble to whom the monastic revenues were paid. For instance, a hundred benefices in the diocese of Luçon alone, and many more elsewhere, belonged to the great Benedictine abbey of Saint-Michel-en-l’Ermitage, of which the Comte de Soissons, the King’s cousin, was the titular abbot. There is little to be said in that prince’s favour; he was a man of “mœurs infâmes”; but Richelieu, in later years his son’s bitter and powerful enemy, had occasion to write M. le Comte a quite grovelling letter of thanks in 1609. He had made the Bishop his “vicar” with regard to all the clergy in the diocese of Luçon who depended on the Abbey of Saint-Michel.

Richelieu dealt with private patrons in a more plain-spoken way. “One called André” having been preferred to a benefice by a great lady, Madame de Sainte-Croix, the Bishop flatly declined to allow so incapable a man “to lead a flock dear to Jesus Christ.” Yet, with all his firmness, he was kind. If the patroness would set a good example to the diocese by placing her living among those to which, after careful examination, the Bishop undertook to appoint the best men, he was willing that André should try his powers with the rest. So strong, so wise and religious, are the arguments of the letter, that its result is not surprising. Madame de Sainte-Croix sent her presentation to the Bishop en blanc. Nobody knows what became of the unlucky André.

Richelieu was not satisfied with appointing his curés; he was determined to educate them. Here he was moved by the new spirit of the time, working so actively in the Jesuits, led by the King’s confessor, Père Cotton, and no less in Pierre de Bérulle, the evangelist, who had just introduced into France the Congregation of the Oratory. His second house in France, for the express purpose of training men for the ministry, was established at Luçon during these years of Richelieu’s residence. Bérulle, a man of old family and of most lovable character, was at this time an intimate friend and associate of the Bishop of Luçon. There came a day of estrangement and political enmity.

Richelieu’s provincial life was by no means solitary. The young and sturdy Bishop of Poitiers, M. de la Rocheposay, son of a bold fighter of the League and worthy of his name, was a neighbour and friend of Poitevin origin; and attached to both cathedrals there were men of distinction, of theological science, burning with zeal not only for the advance of religion and the conversion of heretics, but for the honour and glory of the bishops they loyally served. One of the grand vicars of M. de Poitiers was no less a personage than Duvergier de Hauranne, afterwards known as the Jansenist Abbé de St. Cyran, the famous director of Port-Royal. One of the canons, afterwards dean, of Luçon was Sébastien Bouthillier, Abbé de la Cochère, to whose devotion and cleverness, now and in later years, Richelieu owed much. These young men, with others like-minded, fought hard for the Catholic religion in their province of Poitou; preaching, teaching, holding disputations with Protestant ministers—a work in which the Bishop of Luçon, with his learning fresh from the Sorbonne, distinguished himself highly. They also had their “diversions” in common, which consisted in hard study, keen argument, and preparation for further spiritual conquests. As for real spirituality of mind, there is no doubt that Saint-Cyran, mystic, Augustinian, uncompromising, outstripped his companions as far on that path as Richelieu did on another—the path of political genius.

Luçon in its fever-haunted marshes did not keep the Bishop long. He lived much at Coussay, a priory and small château belonging to his family, in a more hilly and healthy part of his diocese not so far from Poitiers. He seems to have been happy here, away from his quarrelsome Chapter and near his friends: the traditions of Coussay, we are told, still preserve his memory; not as the great Cardinal, but as “prieur et châtelain” of that little village and domain. He was also a good deal at Les Roches, another priory he possessed between Chinon and Saumur, close to Fontevrault, in the north-west corner of his diocese. Here he was very near his old home, Richelieu, where his mother, aunt, and younger sister were still living, the fierce old Rochechouart grandmother having been some years dead.

At Les Roches, it seems, began the famous and lifelong friendship between Armand de Richelieu and François Le Clerc, Marquis du Tremblay, now a man of two-and-thirty, thin, red-haired, deeply marked with the small-pox, who had already made his name as Père Joseph, a Capuchin monk of extraordinary talent and energy. The future Éminence grise was Angevin by birth, had been a soldier, but at twenty-two had thrown himself passionately into “religion.” Before Richelieu came to Luçon, Père Joseph was carrying on a valiant conflict of eloquence, persuasion and violence combined, with the Protestants throughout these western quarters, many of whom were considerable by descent and actual power. Père Joseph was attracted by difficulty. Whatever the truth about his after life may be—history tells contrary tales—there is no doubt that at this time he was an ardent reformer in his own sense of the word and a man of deep personal religion. It was owing to him, and to his friend the Abbess of Fontevrault, Eléonore de Bourbon, aunt of Henry IV., that a Capuchin convent was established at Saumur in the teeth of the Protestant governor, Du Plessis-Mornay. From this convent and others, notably Fontenay, in the diocese of Luçon, Lent preachers were sent out into all parts. Richelieu welcomed them with “extreme joy.” But it was not till a year or two later, after King Henry’s death, when his views and hopes were fast extending beyond diocesan limits, that he and Père Joseph found themselves working together in the difficult and complicated affairs of the Abbey of Fontevrault.

CHAPTER III
1610-1611

“Instructions et Maximes”—The death of Henry IV.—The difficult road to favour—Père Joseph and the Abbey of Fontevrault.