At home the Court was full of quarrels and intrigues: the King, uneasy, discontented, and wilful enough, had not the wisdom or the character needed to dismiss his useless Ministers and to put a strong man in their place. He hunted more desperately than ever, and after a year or two of rapprochement was again becoming estranged from Queen Anne, who for her part fell completely under the influence of the beautiful young widow of Luynes, appointed by him superintendent of her household. After the death of Luynes, this appointment was violently disputed by Madame de Montmorency, widow of the old Constable, who had formerly held it. Madame de Luynes’ chance of keeping it lay in her second marriage with the Duc de Chevreuse, which ranged the great House of Guise on her side. The whole Court, men and women, flung themselves into this quarrel; duels were fought and bribes exacted. Finally, the King and the Ministers decided to suppress the office altogether, to the bitter disappointment of both parties and the wrath of the young Queen. The Queen-mother, with her favourite counsellor, and the Prince de Condé, fallen into disfavour at Court and withdrawn in his government of Berry, were the persons of chief importance who stood aloof from the fray, each watching for some change which might throw political power into the hands of the Prince or the Cardinal.
Richelieu, for his part, was neither patient nor idle, and while outwardly absorbed by palaces, pictures, statues, was working underground with an energy hardly realised by the men of his own day. He had few confidants. Père Joseph, as always, knew and understood him best and admired him most loyally; but Père Joseph was hardly in sympathy with the instrument chiefly used by Richelieu at this time—Fancan, the famous pamphleteer.
This strange and clever being was a canon of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. His family, Langlois by name, had long been attached to the fortunes of the house of Richelieu, and his brother was the Cardinal’s own man of business. The Sieur de Fancan had had a wider experience in the employment of the Duc de Longueville and of the Comtesse de Soissons. He had done some diplomatic work, and had developed bold opinions of his own in matters of politics and religion, posing as “bon français” in opposition to Luynes and the Spanish ultra-Catholic trend of affairs. His Protestant leanings carried him far, according to the correspondence with Germany and England discovered after his death.
For several years Fancan was high in Richelieu’s favour. Unknown, anonymous, brilliant, unscrupulous, he and one or two others made public opinion in France. His pamphlets or libelles, in their blue covers, were sold by hundreds on the bridges and in the book-shops of Paris. They attacked the Ministers of the moment in verse or prose full of ironical fury, personal violence and political wisdom, coarse, impudent and strong. Either in a direct or roundabout way they were addressed to the King. Sometimes France, on her dying bed, held converse with her ancient heroes; sometimes Henry the Great talked with the leaders of his time; sometimes unworthy favourites were gibbeted; sometimes the people cried to their sovereign in bitter complaint of religious tyranny and civil war, and boldly offered the counsel for which nobody asked them.
The King, the Ministers, the nobles, the literary men, the citizens, all read these pamphlets, talked of them, and did not forget them. Louis was much influenced by them; they touched his conscience and sense of truth, if they deepened the gloom in which he followed his hounds in the Forest of Saint-Germain. In the days of the Brûlarts and their successor, the Marquis de la Vieuville, while the affairs of the kingdom were slipping from bad to worse, the pamphlets not only complained more loudly than ever, they advised more strongly than ever, and the King knew well that their advice was good, however unwilling he might be to take it. They told him that there was one man in France whose hand ought to be on the helm, a man who would serve his own country and his own King, not the interests of a foreign power; a man of high courage, prudence and incomparable dexterity, as wise as he was brilliant, ready, like a burning torch, to consume himself in giving light to the State. This man would be the saviour of France, renewing the great days of Henry. It was hardly necessary to name the Cardinal de Richelieu.
Fancan only expressed the minds of all thinking men French or foreign, private or public, who were independent of the Ministers and above political jealousy. But while thus serving France and the Cardinal, he was too careful to serve himself. He was in fact a secret agent, receiving pay from both Catholic and Protestant powers, and successfully cheating them all. The independent game became dangerous when Richelieu was supreme. In the year 1627 it is noted in the Memoirs that “un nommé Fancan,” a spy whose business was to betray and ruin the State, was imprisoned in the Bastille. “All his ends were evil,” says Richelieu, “and the means he used to attain them were detestable and wicked. His ordinary work was the making of libelles in order to decry the government”(!).
A year later, Fancan died in prison. The whole story is mysterious; but Richelieu was as quick to rid himself of a suspected friend as of an open enemy.
In the winter of 1623-4 the Ministry of Sillery and Puisieux came suddenly to an end. These two men were followed into retirement by the scorn and hatred of a public which knew that they had used their power not only to weaken France in Europe, but to pile up large fortunes for themselves. The Chancellor was succeeded immediately by his colleague, M. de la Vieuville, a man of a bolder spirit and more patriotic views, but too nervous, irresolute and indiscreet to guide France through her present difficulties. Fancan, the ill-rewarded, attacked the new Minister with new pamphlets, accusing him and his family of appropriating public funds. To do La Vieuville justice, he began his rule by a very unpopular but necessary move towards economy in the system of universal pensions. It must also be remembered in his favour that he advised Louis XIII. to listen to the general voice and at this critical time to demand the services of Richelieu.
But neither he nor the King intended to give that formidable personage any real authority. Louis shrank in terror from “cet esprit altier et dominateur,” replying to his mother, when she pressed him to admit her favourite to the royal Council, in such prophetic words as these—“Madame, I know him better than you do: he is a man of immeasurable ambition.” With the idea of utilising the Cardinal’s talents while keeping him outside power, La Vieuville invented a new subordinate Council for the management of foreign affairs, and offered him the presidency. This did not mean a seat on the King’s Council, or any independent decision, for, as Richelieu pointed out in his dry and courteous letter of refusal, any resolution passed by this new body was liable to be negatived by the King and his Council. He excused himself on the ground of ill-health and of lack of recent experience in foreign affairs, declaring that he preferred a private life to “un si grand emploi.”
It was not difficult to understand these excuses. What was to be done with him? The King and La Vieuville tried to send him as ambassador to Spain, then to Rome; but he would not go. The Queen-mother obstinately pressed his claim to be admitted to the Council; she spared neither her son nor his Minister; she even held aloof from the Court in her discontent, and it seems that the fear of another serious breach with her had much influence with the King.