As to themselves, Barbin was a man of clean hands, a rare attribute in those days; clear-headed and wise. Mangot, if not brilliant, had the merit of being loyal to his colleagues. Richelieu, in this first short ministry, gave every sign of future greatness, and in a way which makes not only Pontchartrain, but Sully, seem unnaturally blind. Henry’s old Minister was one of those who spoke most slightingly of the man who, more than any other, was to carry on Henry’s foreign policy.
He was amazingly eager and young. He sprang into office like a soldier into the saddle, his whole mind and body devoted at once to the service of his country. The administration of his poor little diocese had taught him to command men. That those who worked with him felt his superiority, not only in position but in talent, is shown by the fact that he was at once given precedence over the other Ministers. The Comte de Brienne resented this, observing in an unfriendly manner that a Bishop should reside in his diocese. The Maréchal d’Ancre, on the other hand, pressed Richelieu to resign his see. His motive was plain, and had nothing to do with the welfare of the people of Luçon: being thus deprived of his chief means of living, the young Minister would be entirely dependent on his patron’s will. Richelieu was far too clever to yield, and the advice of his friend Barbin strengthened his refusal. “Considering the changes which might come about, either through the changeable humours of that personage or by accidents to his fortune, I would never consent, which made him unreasonably angry.”
He resigned his post of chaplain to the reigning Queen, in which he was succeeded by the young Bishop of Langres, Sébastien Zamet, second son of the great financier, and afterwards a conspicuous figure in the history of Port-Royal.
The first duty of the new Ministers was to crush a new rebellion, for the Ducs de Bouillon and de Nevers, demanding the release of Condé and the fall of Concini, had set the east of France in a blaze. Three armies had to be raised and sent to meet them. The commanders were chosen—the Comte d’Auvergne, the Duc de Guise, the Maréchal de Montigny; a harder matter was to find the men and the money. By means of a new tax, Richelieu and Barbin were able to hire a few thousand mercenaries from Flanders, Germany, Holland and Switzerland; the rest were recruited in France by gentlemen who took a heavy commission on their loyal work: indeed, as usual, the soldiers saw little of their promised pay, and were driven, as usual, to extract a living from the wretched people of the provinces. Champagne, the Île de France, the Nivernais, suffered in this winter of 1616 as Berry, Touraine and Poitou had done twelve months before.
One of the complaints of the malcontent princes against the government was the state of the national finances; in truth, the half-dozen years since Henry’s death had reduced France from relative prosperity to something very like bankruptcy. But Richelieu retorted on the princes by a published statement, meant to enlighten the country as to the fate of some of its funds. The Prince de Condé had received 3,665,990 livres; the late Comte de Soissons, his wife and son (Charles de Bourbon died in 1612, and his family were even more restless and greedy than himself), 1,600,000 livres; the old Prince de Conti, now also dead, and his worldly widow, 1,400,000 livres; the Duc de Longueville, 1,200,000 livres; the Duc de Mayenne, 2,000,000 livres; the Duc de Vendôme, 600,000 livres; the Duc d’Épernon, 700,000 livres; the Duc de Bouillon, 1,000,000 livres; all, says M. Martin, without counting “salaries, pensions, and gifts to their friends and servants.” As a livre was about the same as a franc, and then worth five times as much as now, the smallest of these “gratifications” was equal to £120,000, and the largest to nearly £800,000 sterling. It must be added that the eight Marshals of France and six other great officers of the Crown received four times as much as in the days of Henry.
The royal armies were successful; they drove the princes before them, destroying their strongholds, and besieged them in the fortified towns to which they retreated. “They were in despair,” says Pontchartrain. Henry de Richelieu, a keen and good soldier, served as aide-de-camp to the Maréchal de Montigny.
It was at this time that Richelieu, as Secretary of State, gave the Powers of Europe the first intimation that French policy was not for ever to be bound up with the interests of Spain—a great change, after nearly seven years of Marie de Médicis’ rule, and a striking forecast of the future. England, Holland, and Germany were assured of the friendship of France, on the understanding that no assistance was given to the rebel princes. The Spanish marriages, Richelieu’s ambassadors assured the Protestant Powers, did not bind Louis XIII. either to Rome or to Spain “to the prejudice of our ancient allies.” The King would give equal treatment to his subjects of either religion. “No Catholic is so blind as to esteem a Spaniard, in matters of State, more highly than a French Huguenot.”
Independence of Spain had already been practically shown by Richelieu in not forbidding the Duc de Lesdiguières, governor of Dauphiné, himself a distinguished Huguenot, to lead an army of his own across the Alps in order to support Duke Charles Emmanuel of Savoy in his quarrel with the Spanish Viceroy of Milan.
Thus Richelieu was already giving Europe a taste of his strength, and advancing, fast and fearlessly, beyond the narrow lines of the Bishop of Luçon’s courtly speech before the States-General. He was no longer “the man of the clergy,” but “the man of France.” Naturally he was losing the confidence of his empty-headed patron, who scolded the Ministers like schoolboys and was violently jealous of Richelieu’s growing influence with the Queen.
“By God, sir,” he wrote to him on some small matter of discontent, “I complain of you: you treat me too ill; you treat for peace without me; you make the Queen write to me that for the love of her I am to cease my pursuit of M. de Montbazon for the money he owes me. In the name of all the devils, what do you and the Queen expect me to do? Rage gnaws me to the bones.”