Cardinal de Richelieu

by Eleanor C. Price

The three Estates held their sittings in three of the vast rooms of the Convent of the Augustins, but the opening ceremony took place in the hall of the old Hôtel de Bourbon, east of the Louvre. There the little King, a dark, solemn boy, whose majority, on entering his fourteenth year, had lately been celebrated, sat enthroned “on violet velvet, powdered with golden lilies.” On his right were the two Queens, Marie and Marguerite, and the young Princess Élisabeth, the future Queen of Spain. His brother Gaston, a lively, pretty child of five, his little sisters Christine and Henriette Marie, sat on his left; a gorgeous ring of princes, courtiers and great ladies surrounded them. In theory, the body of the hall was kept for deputies; in fact, it was inconveniently crowded by Parisians, chiefly hangers-on of the Court. “Tout était plein de dames et de damoiselles, de gentilshommes et autre peuple,” says Florimond Rapine, the chronicler. The deputies were indignant, and it was long before all could find places. Then the wild, ill-assorted assembly listened kindly to a few stammering words from Louis XIII., and impatiently to a long harangue from Chancellor Sillery, which committed the Government to nothing.

The ceremonies of opening and closing were very much the same. Three months of arguing and quarrelling, during which Paris was frequently in an uproar, the Prince de Condé claiming homage that nobody would pay, the Duc d’Épernon insulting the Parliament, gentlemen fighting in the streets, the Estates themselves divided into violent parties for and against the Pope and Spain, the Third Estate demanding the abolition of pensions and privileges, the nobles and clergy angrily defending their rights, brought the assembly once more together at the Hôtel de Bourbon, in the presence of the Court.

Manners had not improved. Two thousand of the baser sort of courtiers, men and women, with numbers of people of all kinds, had crowded into the best places. Rapine saw “cardinals, bishops, priors, abbots, the nobility and all the Third Estate, crowded and pushed without order, respect, or consideration, among the pikemen and halberdiers.”

THE MAJORITY OF LOUIS XIII (LOUIS XIII AND MARIE DE MÉDICIS)

FROM THE PICTURE BY RUBENS IN THE LOUVRE

In the midst of this babel, the spokesmen of the three Orders had to present to the King their cahiers, containing the result of their stormy deliberations. First it was the turn of the clergy; and their orator, chosen, like his fellows, by the influence of the Queen-Regent, was the Bishop of Luçon.

He had already gained much credit, during the debates of the last three months, for eloquence and judgment; he was one of the group of young and brilliant bishops who supported Cardinal du Perron, always his friend, in his efforts to bring the Tiers État into harmony with the views of the clergy. The burning question was an article resolved on by the Tiers, demanding that the King’s complete independence of every power, spiritual or temporal, except God alone, should be made “a fundamental law of the State.” It was the old Gallican, anti-Roman doctrine, which, as far as the middle classes of France were concerned, had been growing in strength for some years. It had fought the League; it opposed the Jesuits; it defied the authority of the Pope. It rose up in anger against the courtly politicians who now, with their Spanish alliances, were contradicting and nullifying the policy of Henry IV.

There were Gallicans among the clergy, but the majority were Ultramontane, equally loyal to the Pope and to the Queen-Regent’s government. Cardinal du Perron and his distinguished phalanx wasted hours of eloquence—and the Cardinal was both a great orator and an attractive man—in persuading the Tiers to withdraw their obnoxious article. Matters were made worse by the Parliament of Paris, Gallican and anti-Spanish to the core, which openly supported the Tiers, as also did Condé and his followers and the Huguenot party under Bouillon.

Forty years later, Louis XIV.’s whip was to teach both nobles and Parliament the meaning of that divine right and absolute power which they were now eager to claim for their kings. On this occasion the article was referred to Louis XIII., and by his authority was expunged from the cahier of the Tiers État.