Cardinal de Richelieu

by Eleanor C. Price

In this swift and sudden way Richelieu fell from power. The position in which he now found himself was difficult enough. He was the Queen-mother’s chief friend and confidant in the early days of her exile at Blois, and the head of her council, but he was surrounded by mischievous rivals, some Italian, some French, who played him false and undermined his influence. The Queen’s household, following its royal mistress’s lead, was all plot and intrigue, delusion and fury. Almost the only wise person, besides Richelieu himself, was his old friend Madame de Guercheville, Marie’s lady of honour. She, at least, saw good cause for the Bishop of Luçon’s endeavour to keep the little captive Court at Blois in favour with the Court of the Louvre by a constant and civil correspondence with the almighty Luynes. She saw the force of the Bishop’s reasoning—that the actual state of things must be accepted—that the King was the King, and his subjects, including his mother, might as well rebel against Heaven. Therefore Richelieu was doing his best for Her Majesty—and incidentally for himself too—by representing her and her servants as absolutely devoted to the service of the King.

It is natural enough that Luynes, listening to Richelieu’s enemies, was not inclined to trust him, either as to the Queen-mother’s peaceable loyalty or his own. But he made no mistake as to the Bishop’s political genius; and therefore, it seems, he decided to deprive the Queen-mother of his services.

The intrigue is not very clear, even to this day. Richelieu had a letter from his brother, the Marquis, warning him that the King was displeased with him and that he would shortly be ordered to retire to his diocese. Afterwards it appeared that the information, conveyed by friends at Court to Henry de Richelieu, was false, or at least premature. But the Bishop acted on it without delay. Knowing that Marie would not willingly part with him, he asked for a fortnight’s leave of absence and went to the Château de Richelieu. From thence he wrote to the King and to Luynes, protesting his loyalty and complaining of the calumnies of his enemies. The King sent a cold reply, advising him to attend to the duties of his diocese and to remain within its bounds till further orders.

Marie de Médicis was passionately angry, and wrote furious letters to her son and the favourite. It was treating her not like a mother, but like a slave, she said, thus to affront her by removing her most capable servant. But her bitter complaints were of no avail.

Richelieu resigned himself in a more dignified fashion. Every action of his life must be considered in view of the fact that he was a politician of extraordinary cleverness, with clear eyes fixed unchangeably on the future of power which he always meant to attain. For five months, under most troublesome circumstances, he had practically ruled France. He had built his castle eagerly, swiftly, successfully; and then a far less clever man, by whispering into the ready ear of a boy, had shaken it to the ground. It had been built, of course, on the wrong foundation: the Bishop of Luçon had plenty of time to reflect, as he sat among his books at Coussay, on the too late realised truth that divinity hedged a king, that Louis XIII. was the master.

It is doing Richelieu no injustice to suggest that if he had been well received in the King’s Council-chamber on that tragic April 24, he might never have followed the Queen-mother to Blois. His sincere admirer, M. Avenel, says, “His first thoughts were given to the Court and the Ministry; only his second to exile and the Queen: ambitious by temperament, generous from necessity, the seeming heroism of his fidelity in misfortune reduces itself to this.”

And that very semblance of heroic fidelity was probably based on the calculation that Marie de Médicis, being the King’s mother and a person not easily crushed or ignored, would be reconciled to her son before many months had passed by. That Richelieu had any real feeling for her beyond the banal devotion of a courtier seems exceedingly doubtful. He was a hard creature, made of steel and flame, and Marie, a dozen years older than himself, was not an attractive woman. The hasty retreat from Blois was no personal grief to him.

In short, Richelieu now set himself to please—or rather, not to displease—Louis XIII., on whose favour his fortunes so clearly depended. His faith in the future never really deserted him, though for seven years, like Jacob, he served and waited in the wilderness.

During that first summer, at his pleasant priory of Coussay, he wrote a book.

The worthy Père Cotton, the Jesuit confessor of Henry IV. and Louis XIII., had been dismissed by Luynes. His successor, the Père Arnoux, a much less discreet personage, preached a violent sermon before the King against the Protestants, accusing them of misunderstanding and misinterpreting the Bible. Four ministers of Charenton, learned men, published a spirited reply, which was suppressed by royal order, after discussions in the Sorbonne and the Parliament. But the Huguenots boasted loudly that the Catholics could not defend themselves, and it appeared to the Bishop of Luçon that indeed the Church had supplied no remedy to save souls from the evil effects of reading “that pernicious book.”