Cardinal de Richelieu

by Eleanor C. Price

Few of the Queen’s officers showed such a spirit. Long before the battle or rout was over, César, Duc de Vendôme, son of Henry IV., came galloping back into Angers with the news that all was lost.

“He entered her presence,” says Richelieu, “avec un épouvantement épouvantable, saying, ‘Madame, I wish I were dead.’ On which one of her ladies, who did not lack wit replied, fort à propos, ‘If that be really your wish you should have stayed where you were....’ The Duc de Vendôme was promptly followed by all the other chiefs, except the Comte de Saint-Aignan, who was taken prisoner.”

So ended “la drôlerie des Ponts-de-Cé,” as the wags called it. Now was the time for the peacemakers. After a few distracted hours, during which, says Richelieu, “fear was absolutely mistress of all hearts and reason had no place,” a treaty, quite amazingly favourable to the Queen-mother, was drawn up by himself and the King’s envoys.

He must have wondered at the success of his own diplomacy. At first, looking round on his terrified party, on the helpless city with a royal army at her gates, he had advised Marie de Médicis to pack up her jewels and ride off by night with a few hundred light horse, fording the Loire and gaining the free country beyond, where she might make her own terms with her enemies. But the unexpected moderation of the King and Luynes made everything easy. The treaty of Angoulême was confirmed; the Queen’s partisans were amnestied; the Ponts-de-Cé with their defences were restored to her; her debts were paid; she had full liberty to live where she pleased, so long as she remained in good understanding with the King and his Ministers.

All this was the work of Richelieu, in concert with Luynes. The truth was, that the rivalry of these two had reached a point where it became plain that they were necessary to each other. Luynes knew, or fancied, that the King was getting beyond his authority: the dismal boy had grown into a man and a soldier. The clever and reckless Prince de Condé made him feel what Luynes never felt or taught—the charm of war. And he was ready, more ready than Luynes wished, for a really cordial reconciliation with his mother. This took place at the old Maréchal de Cossé’s magnificent Château de Brissac, south of the Loire, five days after the battle. Marie again wept tears of joy. “I have you now,” said Louis, “and you shall never escape me again.”

Detested as he was by the nobles and princes, shadowed by Condé, threatened by the Queen-mother’s newly rising influence, Luynes thought it politic to place Richelieu, as far as possible, definitely on his side. “With great caresses,” he renewed the promise of a Cardinal’s Hat. A messenger was sent to Rome with a letter from the King; and this letter was soon followed by the despatch of Sébastien Bouthillier, ever faithful—not, as some writers have represented him, a private envoy from Richelieu himself, but authorised by Louis, ready at this moment to gratify his mother in every way.

But a thousand intrigues, volumes of letters, promises made and broken in France and in Italy, still lay between the Bishop of Luçon and his ambition’s crown. Bouthillier remained at Rome two years, working hard in the dark. He was made Bishop of Aire before his patron became Cardinal, but nothing checked his devoted labour. Old Paul V. was difficult and obstinate. He had enough French cardinals: the young Bishop, to whose early consecration he had half unwillingly consented, had not repaid him well: as Secretary of State, his attitude towards the Holy See had been doubtful: he had shown some inclination of late to ally the Queen-mother with the Huguenots. And besides all this it was well understood at Rome that whatever letters, whatever ambassadors, might be sent by Louis XIII., M. de Luynes was in no hurry.

While continuing his sourdes et déloyales pratiques—no secret to Richelieu, who endured them with sphinx-like patience—Luynes did his best to let all men believe him on the best of terms with the Queen-mother’s chief counsellor. He suggested the union of their families by a marriage between his nephew, Antoine de Beauvoir du Roure, Seigneur de Combalet, and Richelieu’s niece, Marie Magdeleine Vignerot du Pont-de-Courlay. She was a very pretty girl of sixteen; he was a coarse, red-faced, awkward soldier. She was not a willing sacrifice; neither was her uncle particularly eager; he hesitated long indeed for several reasons, but the Queen-mother advised him, for fear of Luynes, to consent, and the marriage was celebrated in Paris in November, during the Court festivities that followed the triumphant return of Louis XIII. from his short campaign against the Protestants of Béarn.

Madame de Combalet’s unwelcome husband did not annoy her long; he was killed at the siege of Montpellier in September 1622. The young widow, a girl of independent spirit, worthy of her mother’s family, at once resolved that she would not be sacrificed again. She made a vow—“un peu brusquement,” says Tallemant—that she would become a Carmelite nun.... “She dressed as modestly as a dévote of fifty.... She wore a gown of woollen stuff, and never lifted her eyes. With all this she was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen-mother and never stirred from the Court. She was then in the full bloom of her beauty. This sort of thing lasted a long time.”

It lasted till the supreme power of the Cardinal made his niece equal to the greatest ladies in France and a probable match for princes. But Madame de Combalet—better known as Madame d’Aiguillon—kept her vow so far as that she never married again.