Cardinal de Richelieu

by Eleanor C. Price

According to tradition, they found little to say to each other. “My son has grown taller since I saw him,” said Marie. “For your service, Madame,” said Louis.

They walked together, surrounded by crowds, to the house, and then, while the Queen dined, Louis strolled in the garden. Later on, another splendid cavalcade arrived from Tours—that of the reigning Queen, who “made her compliments with many demonstrations of joy” and accompanied the Queen-mother in her coach to Tours, the King flying his hawks in the open country by the way.

Marie’s visit to the Court at Tours was not a success. The precedence taken by Anne of Austria offended her. And Luynes was playing a double game. He wanted the reconciliation, which would rid him of an independent adversary; he wanted to work a separation between Marie and the nobles of her party, especially the powerful Duc d’Épernon; but he watched with a jealous eye any appearance of a real understanding between her and the King. As to her friends and servants, he gave them fair words and played them false at every turn. His conduct, dishonest or diplomatic, may be judged by the fact that while the King was writing to the Pope to request that the Archbishop of Toulouse and the Bishop of Luçon should be promoted to be cardinals, Luynes was giving the Court of Rome to understand, by a secret despatch, that only the first name mentioned by the King need be taken in earnest. These “sourdes et déloyales pratiques,” as M. Avenel calls them, continued for many months, and Richelieu had few powerful advocates. Cardinal du Perron was dead; and Cardinal Bentivoglio, the Nuncio, remarked coldly on the extravagance of the Queen-mother’s demand and “la sfrenata ambizione di Lusson.”

The Court left Tours on its return to Paris towards the end of September. The King wished his mother to accompany him, but she refused, choosing first to take formal possession of her government of Anjou. Travelling by way of Chinon, and lingering a few days at the stately castle on the Vienne, which had been made over to her by treaty, and was commanded by the Seigneur de Chanteloube, one of her most violent partisans, she received news which deepened her displeasure and suspicion with regard to the Duc de Luynes. Her younger son’s governor, the Comte du Lude, had died of fever at Tours, and now, without a word to her, Colonel d’Ornano, a creature of Luynes and a quite unfit man for the charge, was appointed in his stead. Another piece of news, sprung upon the Queen-mother without consultation or formal announcement, was that of the release of the Prince of Condé, her own and Richelieu’s enemy, from Vincennes, and his reception by the King, with a royal declaration blaming those who had brought about his captivity. This may have been aimed at the Maréchal d’Ancre, but it struck the Queen. Marie understood that the first prince of the blood was now to be played off against herself in Luynes’ game.

She was magnificently received at Angers. The citizens of that noble old town were as warlike, independent and keenly political now as in the days of King John, and quite as unwilling to “open wide their gates” to any unpopular sovereign. They had been amusing themselves during that summer by rioting against their excellent bishop, Fouquet de la Varenne, on some matter of ecclesiastical discipline. Commander de la Porte, with all his courage and loyalty, was not quite the man to manage “this peevish town.” He was a good-tempered chatterbox. Before the Queen’s entrance into the city, Richelieu wrote a long letter to “my dear Uncle,” in which, after a number of practical details as to arms and provisions, he recommended gravity and dignity in dealing with the bourgeoisie.

All went well on October 16, when Marie took formal possession of her city of Angers. Thousands of people received her with immense rejoicings. There was a grand military display, martial music and ringing of bells, as the Queen approached, having crossed the long arches and causeways of the Ponts-de-Cé. She did not lodge in the gloomy old castle, where Henry II. of England once held his court, but in the most beautiful house in the town, the Logis Barrault, now known to travellers as the Museum of Angers. There a Court soon gathered round her, increasing in numbers from day to day.

This state of things continued through the winter and the spring. Over and over again the King invited his mother to Paris; but she and her intimate counsellors found little satisfaction in the assurances sent by Luynes of the royal good-will. The promises went hand in hand with too many slights and affronts; and though Richelieu, according to his own account, believed the Queen-mother’s right place to be at her son’s Court, and though he felt that his own future lay there, he hesitated to press his opinion against that of the majority of her friends. He could not fail to see, as they did, that “there was much to be feared in the power of the favourites.”

Luynes and his brothers were the first men in France. As to personal character, though spoilt by success, these three Provençal adventurers were good fellows enough; but as to greediness and ambition, Concini himself had not gone further. In order to be independent of the King’s favour, Luynes had contrived to get most of the strong frontier towns of France into his hands. His brothers, one of them a Marshal of France, married two of the richest heiresses in the kingdom and took their place among the highest nobility.

“You would say,” writes Richelieu in his Memoirs, “that France exists for them alone; that for them she abounds in all kinds of riches.... The governments and places that they hold seem in small proportion to those they consider their due; ... what is not to be had for money they take by violence; ... for their private bargains they make use of the money raised from the people for the public good. In a word, if the whole of France were to be sold, ils achèteroient la France de la France même.”

Add to all this the insolent, boasting speeches which came to the Queen-mother’s ears, the complaints of the King’s own Ministers and of the Parliament of Paris, who liked the new favourites no better than the old, and the anger of the nobles who found their pensions unpaid and the best appointments snatched from their teeth;—it was not amazing either that Marie hesitated as to leaving her town and Court in the west to place herself, personally, in the power of Messieurs de Luynes, or that Richelieu was slow in advising her to do so.