Cardinal de Richelieu

by Eleanor C. Price

He was a favourite with most of his neighbours, clerical and lay. His correspondence bears witness to the wideness of his acquaintance and interests, both public and private; people appealed to him as a friend, an arbitrator, and he never disappointed them. He was courteous, kind, even tender in his language: “episcopal and benign.” He was on the politest terms with such of the great men as occasionally crossed his path: the Duc de Sully, governor of Poitou, now no longer a courtier and an absentee; the Duc de Villeroy, still in office, father of his friend M. d’Alincourt, and others of high rank and importance. His letters to such men as these, as well as to his more intimate friends, might have foreshadowed his coming greatness for those who had eyes to see. To the general company, however, the writer whose well-turned assurances and compliments had such a background of passionate ambition for his own and for his country’s glory, was nothing but a clever phrase-maker, a young man of seven-and-twenty who could talk and argue, convert a few Protestants, deal discreetly with the wrangles of religious women. And outside a limited circle the name of Richelieu was probably unknown, except as that of a pensioned courtier of the Regency.

While the Bishop of Luçon waited for his opportunity, political and religious unrest was deepening in France. Henry IV.’s policy of opposition to the House of Austria and alliance with Savoy, Holland, and the German Protestants, had been set aside very early in the new reign, and two royal marriages were arranged to bind France closer to the Holy See and Catholic Europe. Louis XIII. was to be married to the Infanta Anna of Spain—known to history as Anne of Austria—and his eldest sister, Élisabeth, to the Infant of Spain, afterwards Philip IV. These marriages seem to have pleased nobody in France except the Regent, her immediate Court circle and her Ministers, whose only hope of keeping their place lay in her favour. The Foreign Secretary, Villeroy, the Chancellor, Brûlart de Sillery, the Connétable de Montmorency, were among the Queen’s advisers in this affair. Most of the nobles, and especially the princes, were more or less in opposition; the strengthening of the Crown by so close an alliance with Spain did not suit their interests. Henry IV. himself, when the project was first laid before him by the Spanish Ambassador in 1610, had not listened encouragingly.

The Huguenot party was both displeased and alarmed. Assemblies were held at Nîmes, at Saumur, at La Rochelle; but the leaders, such as the Ducs de Bouillon and de Rohan—Sully’s son-in-law—were not ready to proceed to civil war. Condé, at first throwing in his lot with them, soon went farther. He gathered troops in the west and threatened Poitiers, after publishing, with the other princes, a fierce manifesto against the Regent and her advisers. The young Bishop of Poitiers, Richelieu’s friend, took matters with a high hand, closed the gates in the Queen’s name, and prepared to defend the town against Condé, with the high approval of the future Abbé de St Cyran, a worthy member, like himself, of the Church Militant. The Prince’s bands overran Poitou, annoying the peaceable inhabitants, Madame de Richelieu among them, exacting large sums and quartering themselves in the villages.

In a fiery letter to M. de Neufbourg, an officer of Condé’s ally, the Duc de Mayenne, the Bishop of Luçon expresses his amazement that his mother has been thought worthy of so little courtesy. “Be good enough,” he says, “to exempt the parish of Saulnes, which belongs to Madame de Richelieu, from the lodging of troops and the contributions they demand. I would have written direct to him (M. de Mayenne) had not his treatment of my mother made me aware that he either believes me to be no longer of this world or that he deems me now and for ever incapable of doing him any service. Therefore I address myself to you....”

Like his episcopal brother of Poitiers, Richelieu took his stand openly on the side of Royalty and against the horde of greedy nobles who caught at any pretext to add to their own possessions and power. It was not only the political necessities of his later life that made him their enemy.

The flame of civil war soon died down. In May 1614 the Queen signed the treaty of St. Menehould, which pacified the princes, after some delay, by granting most of their desires. Condé, Nevers, Vendôme, Mayenne, Longueville, Bouillon and others received enormous pensions, as well as fortresses and governments; last, not least, the States-General were summoned, as the manifesto had demanded, to discuss the grievances of the three estates of the realm. The Huguenot party had already obtained some satisfaction. For the time, the Regent and her ministers had bought victory: the arrangements for the Spanish marriages went steadily on.

The Bishop of Luçon was directed by Sully, governor of Poitou, to supervise “with gentleness” the election in his diocese of deputies for the States-General. He did his duty, no doubt, in the matter; but the election that interested him was that of the diocese of Poitiers. There his friends were working for him. La Rocheposay, the warlike Bishop, his lieutenant Saint-Cyran, and Richelieu’s faithful Bouthillier, smoothed the way for his uncontested election as one of the two deputies of the clergy of Poitiers. The old city, so lately in a stage of siege, rang joy-bells on August 10, the appointed day. All over Poitou, all over France, the bells were ringing, for every estate in the kingdom hoped much from the States-General. It may at once be said that rich and poor, great and small, were disappointed. What the bells rang in was not liberty, release from taxes, confirmation of rights, but the reign of Richelieu. And in consequence of that reign the voice of France in her States-General was not heard again for one hundred and seventy-five years—not until, in 1789, “the whirligig of Time brought in his revenges.”

The States-General of 1614 were formally opened in Paris on Monday, October 27. On Sunday took place the customary procession from the great Convent of the Augustins on the left bank, along the quay, winding through narrow streets crowded with spectators and hung with tapestry, to the bridge over the Seine which led most directly to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, where a solemn high mass was to be celebrated. It was a procession gay with colour and variety, although most of the clergy and all the Third Estate were in sober black. But the way was kept throughout by the royal guards, Swiss and French, in their varied liveries. Archers marched alongside, bearing immense tapers, faint flames quivering in the chilly air of the early autumn morning. Many of the deputies shivered, and complained of the cold.

It was a representative procession. The religious Orders, parish clergy, and trade corporations of Paris, the canons of Notre Dame, the doctors of the University—these led the way. Then came the hundred and ninety-two deputies of the Tiers État, walking four by four, with their distinguished President, Robert Miron, provost of the merchants. Then a hundred and thirty-two nobles in Court dress with swords. Then the clerical deputies, a hundred and forty, followed by the bishops and archbishops in purple and the cardinals in red. Then the Archbishop of Paris, bearing the sacred Host under a gorgeous canopy. Then the boy-King, walking in white, his mother in deep black, her young children, her attendant ladies and gentlemen; Queen Marguerite de Valois, the “aunt” of the Royal Family, and various other great ladies, princes, and nobles attached to the Court. After these followed the whole Parliament and the Municipality of Paris, with many officials and guards.

Like a wave of noise, colour and light, with its tramping feet and flickering candles, under the heavy clangour of the great bells, the procession rolls into Notre Dame, and the Cardinal-Archbishop of Bordeaux, Richelieu’s hated Metropolitan, thunders out his sermon to the Estates of France: “Fear God. Honour the King.”