Towards the end of April, 1624, the complications in home and foreign affairs increasing every day, the pamphlets stinging more sharply, public and private voices waxing louder, La Vieuville found himself forced to advise the King to admit Richelieu to his Council—and this in the full consciousness that the Cardinal’s rise must mean his own fall. Even now he tried, in self-defence, to limit his new colleague’s power for mischief. He was to sit on the Council for the purpose of giving his opinion, but nothing more; he might use the influence, but not the authority, of a Minister of the Crown. Richelieu swept this fragile barrier easily away; indeed, from his own account, he ignored it altogether, and history would have forgotten it, but for some detailed reports sent from Paris to his masters by the Florentine ambassador.
The Cardinal’s Memoirs, with his letter to the King, show him by no means eager to accept the offered place which had been for so long “his one thought by day, his one dream by night.” All the intrigues of the affair were open to him, and if he despised and distrusted La Vieuville and the rest of the Council, he had little confidence in the jealous, uncertain temper of the King. Writing to Louis, he began by frankly acknowledging that God had given him “some enlightenment and strength of mind.” These qualities, however, were rendered unserviceable by extreme bodily weakness—so much so that he had lately besought the Queen-mother to relieve him from his light duties as superintendent of her household. Such indeed were his infirmities that he could not live without frequent excursions into the country. He added that he had many enemies, especially those of the Queen-mother, who would certainly, on his account, do their best to make mischief between their Majesties; while he assured the King that he would rather die than do anything against the welfare of the State, for which he would shed the last drop of his blood.
These same enemies would take advantage of the fact that the Cardinal’s opinion might frequently differ from that of His Majesty’s other Ministers; for, once on the Council, he would go his own way as to what he thought best for the King’s service. He would not be merely an ornamental figure, set up “to please the public imagination and to dazzle the eyes of the world,” but an honest statesman who would advise plainly and act boldly. All this he wished the King to understand, and underlying all this was the question—would Louis, as a loyal master, stand between a faithful servant and those enemies?
If, in spite of all considerations, the King remained in the same mind, the Cardinal said that he could only obey. The one condition was that, while working regularly with the rest of the Council, he must ask to be spared “the visits and solicitations of private persons,” which, besides occupying his time uselessly, would complete the ruin of his health.
It was a proud, straightforward letter. In it Louis XIII. felt the first strong grasp of the hand which was to hold and lead him almost to his life’s end.
Richelieu entered the Council on April 26, 1624. His first act was to demand precedence, as Cardinal, of all the other Ministers, and this was granted after long arguments; but he did not reach supreme power till the following autumn, when La Vieuville’s incapable government ended in sudden disgrace. Those were dishonest times; and it seems most probable that Richelieu, while outwardly friendly to La Vieuville, was not only opposing his uncertain policy but hastening his fall by the underground work of Fancan and other paid pamphleteers.
On August 13 the Marquis de la Vieuville carried his forced resignation to the King at Saint-Germain, was arrested by the captain of the guard and driven off to be imprisoned in the castle of Amboise. The government of France was already in the hands of Cardinal de Richelieu, and Louis XIII. had accepted the list of Ministers presented by him. The eighteen years’ career had begun which changed France, making absolutism possible, bringing in the Age of Louis XIV. and as a consequence, the Revolution.
Richelieu wrote to Père Joseph, who had lately been made Provincial of the Capuchin Order:
“You,” he said, “have been God’s chief agent in bringing me to this place of honour.... I pray you to hasten your journey, and to come to me as soon as possible, to share with me the management of affairs. There are pressing matters that I can confide to no one else, nor decide without your opinion. Come then quickly to receive these proofs of my esteem.”
From this time down to Père Joseph’s death, in 1638, the two Eminences, the Red and the Grey, were seldom parted.