Cardinal de Richelieu

by Eleanor C. Price

The writer goes on to explain that the Cardinal gladly seized this opportunity of getting rid of Limours.

“The Cardinal was disgusted with that house, finding it unpleasant and unhealthy; both because of its low situation, yet without fountains or other waters, and because of many other things that were lacking; and he was happy to seize a good chance of getting rid of it, and greatly to his advantage; which he could not have expected in any other quarter. For the Queen-mother’s persuasion decided the King to gratify the Cardinal her creature, in whom she had then every confidence.”

The last sentence hardly bears the stamp of truth. In the year 1627 and later, Richelieu could not be described as the creature of Marie de Médicis, and her confidence in him had almost ceased to exist.

In the spring of that year the discontent between France and England flashed out into war. This had been imminent since the early autumn of 1626, when Charles I. roughly drove out his wife’s French household; and Bassompierre’s embassy of remonstrance had only smoothed matters over for the time. Richelieu did not desire war with England; it meant a new struggle with the Huguenots. He intended to fix his own date for that, and to make it final. He was not yet ready. But this time Buckingham’s jealous anger and restless ambition were strong enough to force his hand. Louis XIII. had refused to receive the Duke again at the French Court. This, according to contemporaries, be they right or wrong, was the chief and secret cause of the war. Outwardly, it was brought about by quarrels and piracies on both sides at sea, as well as by Charles I.’s sympathy with the oppressed Huguenots; but every enemy of Richelieu’s government, Protestant or Catholic, was more or less drawn into a coalition against him. Not only the Duc de Soubise and his friends in England, and the Duc de Rohan in Languedoc, but Duke Charles of Lorraine, influenced by Madame de Chevreuse, the Duke of Savoy and his guest the Comte de Soissons, and the Archduchess Isabel, ruler of the Low Countries, who did her best to draw Spain to England’s side, were concerned in this great enterprise of crushing Cardinal de Richelieu. As a fact, at this very time, Spain and France were allied by treaty against England; but Richelieu differed from the Queen-mother and the rest of the Catholic party in profoundly distrusting Olivarez; and he knew, quite as well as his many enemies did, that an English victory would leave France, divided in herself, standing alone against Europe.

From mid-winter onward, the English fleet was preparing; through what enormous difficulties, readers of English history know. From week to week, all through the spring, more and more alarming reports crossed the Channel: the English were coming; any day might see their sails in the north-west, bearing down on the coast of France. La Rochelle was their destination; but they could not reach the Huguenot city without first seizing one or both of the islands, Ré and Oléron, which guard it from the sea. Of these, Ré was now the strongest, new royal forts having been built there since the last Huguenot revolt, to overawe the town. Convinced that the English “could do nothing there,” Richelieu threw himself with fiery energy into the task of strengthening Oléron and the forts on the mainland. His letters, written during those months to the governors of towns and castles on the coast, especially to M. de Guron, governor of Marans, M. de Launay-Razilly, commanding in Oléron, M. de Toiras and others, including his brother-in-law the Marquis de Brézé, and his friend and lieutenant M. de Sourdis, Bishop of Maillezais, afterwards Archbishop of Bordeaux—kinsman and successor of his enemy Cardinal Sordido—are a really wonderful study. Few great statesmen have shown such a genius for detail. As the danger approached his letters flew to all parts of the coast, and in reading them one may almost hear the heavy strokes of the axe in Breton forests, the hammering of ship-builders, the creaking of cordage, the clank of arms and the rolling of cannon-balls, the rumbling of waggons laden with tools, powder, provisions for the islands. M. de Guron, through those months of March, April and May, can have slept but little. He had to understand “at half a word.” He had to cope with the angry tempers of the men who worked under him; he had to consider the poor people of the islands and to take care that the soldiers did not oppress them. Over and over again Richelieu writes in the interest of the peasants; they must not be taxed or tormented. In fact, they were neighbours of his old Luçon days; a very few miles to the north, the spire of his cathedral rose over the marshes; almost every letter shows his familiarity with every inch of that coast.

Another characteristic point is the gentle tone in which Richelieu writes of the Huguenots, grimly watching from the walls of La Rochelle the strengthening of the islands, the gathering of armies, the hurrying to their coast of a crowd of young Catholic nobles, the desperate energy of equipment with which ships and boats were being collected from north and south to meet the coming storm. The people of La Rochelle were anxious, and with reason. Their minds were divided, not altogether rejoicing in the English descent, as they proved a little later—for when the Duc de Soubise, coming from England, presented himself at the gates, they were shut against him until his mother, old Madame de Rohan of the dreams and visions, went down herself to the harbour, commanded that the gates should be opened, took his hand and led him in. The citizens of La Rochelle might resist the rulers of their own country, but they were not unanimously ready to welcome a foreign invader, and it was Richelieu’s policy to encourage this doubtfulness. Writing to M. de Navailles, commander of the cavalry in the island of Ré, he more than once enjoins him to assure Messieurs de la Rochelle, who might be disquieted by the warlike preparations going on at their very gates, of the excellent intentions of His Majesty. They need fear nothing, as long as they paid him the respect and obedience they owed. These military works were not for their harm, but for his own security. Again, writing to his uncle the Commander de la Porte, governor of Angers, Richelieu says: “Let the Huguenots spread what reports they will: provided they continue in obedience, they will always be well treated. We intend no harm to them, but only to prevent their doing any.”

The alarms and the frenzied preparations went on through the spring and far into the summer, and were at their height while the Bouteville affair and the death of Madame occupied the mind of Paris. On the day of the royal obsequies at Saint-Denis, the English fleet had already sailed from “Porsemus,” as Richelieu spells it, and ten or twelve days later it appeared off La Rochelle. Louis XIII. had already left Paris for the west coast. Monsieur was appointed lieutenant-general of the royal armies in Poitou, which were actually commanded by the King’s old cousin, the Duc d’Angoulême, with Louis de Marillac, brother of the Chancellor, as second in command, and by the Marshals de Schomberg and de Bassompierre. Later in the year, the Prince de Condé and the Duc de Montmorency were charged with checking the Duc de Rohan in Languedoc. By that time, Toiras being blockaded by the English in the Isle of Ré, and the attitude of La Rochelle being no longer doubtful, Richelieu had ceased to show patience and toleration of the King’s rebels. The day he had long foreseen had at last arrived. “Faut ruiner les Huguenots. Si Ré se sauve, facile. S’il se perd, plus difficile, mais faisable et nécessaire comme l’unique remède de la perte de Ré. Autrement les Anglois et Rochelois seroyent unis et puissans.”

These notes form part of a report drawn up by the Cardinal’s secretaries of an interview between himself and Condé, which took place at Richelieu in the early autumn. The words may probably have been Condé’s: that foolish firebrand was in favour of setting the whole kingdom in a blaze of religious war, of persecuting the Protestants and pulling down their houses, in hopes that they might make such reprisals as would infuriate the country against them and lead to something like their extermination. These mad ideas were far enough from Richelieu; but he, equally with Condé, was now resolved to crush the rebel power, and to bring all Frenchmen under the King’s authority.

But a long and difficult struggle lay before him.

The King was ill when he left Paris, and after one day’s journey fever seized him so violently that he could go no farther. For weeks he lay between life and death at Villeroy, on the road to Orléans. He was there in the middle of July, when a courier arrived from the Marquis de Brézé, bringing news that the English had landed in Ré, and after sharp fighting, many precious lives being lost on both sides, had forced M. de Toiras to retire into the fort of Saint-Martin, where he was closely besieged. No one disputed the desperate courage of Toiras; but he earned great blame from the Cardinal for his rashness and want of foresight; the citadel being hardly in a state of defence, and provisioned for seven or eight weeks only. Boasting that he could drive off the English with one arm, he had indeed never faced the possibility of being shut up in Saint-Martin. The despised enemy was to teach him a sharp lesson.