The campaign against the Protestants of Béarn, undertaken by Louis XIII. immediately after the battle of the Ponts-de-Cé, was successful in its object of enforcing the royal edict of 1617 and restoring Church property, now held by the Huguenots, to the use of the Catholic clergy. At the same time, Henry IV.’s independent little kingdom of Béarn was formally united to the kingdom of France. All this was done with much noise and little bloodshed. It amused the King immensely. One game for another, fighting was better than falconry. Through the darkening days he galloped back to Paris, and had the additional joy of arriving before he was expected.
“Louis XIII. arrived on November 7, early in the morning, accompanied by fifty-four young nobles, riding at full speed, preceded by four post-masters sounding the horn. He rode through the city, where he was not expected. The noise made by his troop woke the citizens, they ran to the windows, and as soon as the monarch was recognised there were cries of Vive le Roi. The guard at the Louvre, seeing an armed troop approach, stood on the defence. They soon learned that it was the King; the palace rang with transports of joy; Louis XIII. flew to embrace his mother and his wife. The day was for him one of triumph. The shops were shut; they feasted in the streets and lighted bonfires in the evening.”
But the Huguenot party did not rejoice. “As soon,” says Richelieu, “as His Majesty had brought Béarn back to its duty, there was talk of the assembling of Huguenots in many parts of the kingdom.” And very swiftly the matter advanced beyond talk. From the central assembly at La Rochelle orders went out for the Protestants to rise in all quarters. In May 1621 Louis XIII. started on a campaign against them which, first under the influence of Luynes, then under that of Condé, lasted through the greater part of two years—a campaign rather of long sieges than of pitched battles, but costing many distinguished lives, among them that of the Duc de Mayenne.
At the opening of this campaign, Luynes made himself Constable of France. He was hardly qualified for the highest military office in the kingdom, being not only timid as a soldier, but absolutely ignorant of the science of war. His career, however, was now nearly at an end. His star had been for some time waning, and Saint-Simon might well say that he died at the right moment, for Louis, “whose eyes were opening,” was beginning to turn against the man whom he had so heartily admired. “Il fut enfin frappé des dimensions de ce colosse formé tout-à-coup,” grown to supreme power in the very moment of Concini’s fall. He made perilous confidences, from which wise courtiers fled, calling the Constable “King Luynes,” and complaining violently of him and his brothers. Luynes did not, as he believed, know his young King through and through.
The favourite fell as suddenly as he had risen. Three days of fever, in a village near the castle of Monheurt, which the royal army was besieging, carried off the richest and most powerful man in France. A few days later, the servants who conveyed him to his own estates for burial were playing at dice on his coffin while they rested their horses.
It is not fair to judge Luynes entirely from the point of view of enemies and rivals, even if one cannot accept the high praise bestowed on him by his admirers—M. Victor Cousin for example. From many of the vices of a favourite, Luynes was free; on the whole, his influence over Louis XIII. was rather good than bad. He was good-tempered and affectionate, though spoilt by power and terribly greedy. Clever, if not courageous, and something of a statesman, it has been said that he “anticipated in some respects the future policy of Richelieu.” He certainly saved the King from being dominated by ambitious princes, and he did his best to make obedient subjects of the Huguenots. But while he carried on war in France against them, their defeats in Germany were aggrandising Spain and the Empire and destroying that balance of power which Richelieu was to restore. If Luynes had been Richelieu, the Thirty Years War might have been stopped at its beginning.
Richelieu behaved with extraordinary discretion, even after the favourite had been removed from his path. Effacing himself in public life, he spent his time in assiduous attendance on Marie de Médicis, both at Court and in her excursions into the provinces, during one of which she paid him a visit at Coussay. To please her, they say, he learned to play the lute; and scandalous gossips found pasture in whispered tales as to the relations between the Queen and her handsome Bishop. All falsehoods, probably; but in any case, at this date his influence with her was unbounded, and as far as politics went he used it well and wisely.
In the winter of 1621-2, when Louis XIII., after the death of Luynes, turned to his mother with unusual affection, Richelieu advised the King, through her, to cease fighting his own Protestant subjects and rather, with arms or diplomacy, to check the rising, preponderating power of the House of Hapsburg. The advice was not taken. The King’s mind was now ruled by the restless Condé and by the cunning old Chancellor Brûlart de Sillery and his son, Brûlart de Puisieux. For more than two years longer, the cowardly policy and the selfish intrigues of men like these were able to keep Richelieu helpless in the background. And it was not till eight months after the death of Luynes that a new Pope, Gregory XV., consented to place the Bishop of Luçon upon the roll of Cardinals.