Whilst the cardinal imposed upon the French clergy the obligations common to all subjects, he defended the kingly power and majesty against the Ultramoutanes, and especially against the Jesuits. Several of their pamphlets had already been censured by his order when Father Sanctarel published a treatise on heresy and schism, clothed with the pope’s approbation, and containing, amongst other dangerous propositions, the following: “The pope can depose emperor and kings for their iniquities or for personal incompetence, seeing that he has a sovereign, supreme, and absolute power.” The work was referred to the Parliament, who ordered it to be burned in Place de Greve; there was talk of nothing less than the banishment of the entire order.
Father Cotton, superior of the French Jesuits, was summoned to appear before the council; he gave up Father Sanctarel unreservedly, making what excuse he best could for the approbation of the pope and of the general of the Jesuits. The condemnation of the work was demanded, and it was signed by sixteen French fathers. The Parliament was disposed to push the matter farther, when Richelieu, always as prudent as he was firm in his relations with this celebrated order, represented to the king that there are “certain abuses which are more easily put down by passing them over than by resolving to destroy them openly, and that it was time to take care lest proceedings should be carried to a point which might be as prejudicial to his service as past action had been serviceable to it.” The Jesuits remained in France, and their college at Clermont was not closed; but they published no more pamphlets against the cardinal. They even defended him at need.
Richelieu’s grand quarrel with the clergy was nearing its end when the climax was reached of a disagreement with the court of Rome, dating from some time back. The pope had never forgiven the cardinal for not having accepted his mediation in the affair with Spain on the subject of the Valteline; he would not accede to the desire which Richelieu manifested to become legate of the Holy See in France, as Cardinal d’Amboise had been; and when Marshal d’Estrees arrived as ambassador at Rome, his resolute behavior brought the misunderstanding to a head: the pope refused the customary funeral honors to Cardinal La Valette, who had died in battle, without dispensation, at the head of the king’s army in Piedmont. Richelieu preserved appearances no longer; the king refused to receive the pope’s nuncio, and prohibited the bishops from any communication with him. The quarrel was envenomed by a pamphlet called Optatus Gallus. The cardinal’s enemies represented him as a new Luther ready to excite a schism and found a patriarchate in France. Father Rabardeau, of the Jesuits’ order, maintained, in reply, that the act would not be schismatical, and that the consent of Rome would be no more necessary to create a patriarchate in France than it had been to establish those of Constantinople and Jerusalem.
Urban VIII. took fright; he sent to France Julius Mazarin, at that time vice-legate, and already frequently employed in the negotiations between the court of Rome and Cardinal Richelieu, who had taken a great fancy to him. The French clergy had just obtained authority to vote the subsidy in an assembly; and the pope contented himself with this feeble concession. Mazarin put the finishing touch to the reconciliation, and received as recompense the cardinal’s hat. In fact, the victory of the civil power was complete, and the independence of the crown clearly established. “His Holiness,” said the cardinal, “ought to commend the zeal shown by his Majesty for the welfare of the church, and to remain satisfied with the respect shown him by an appeal to his authority which his Majesty might have dispensed with in this matter, having his Parliaments to fall back upon for the chastisement of those who lived evilly in his kingdom.” In principle, the supreme question between the court of Rome and the kingly power remained undecided, and it showed wisdom on the part of Urban VIII., as well as of Cardinal Richelieu, never to fix fundamentally and within their exact limits the rights and pretensions of the church or the crown.
Cardinal Richelieu had another battle to deliver, and another victory, which was to be more decisive, to gain. During his exile at Avignon, he had written against the Reformers, violently attacking their doctrines and their precepts; he was, therefore, personally engaged in the theological strife, and more hotly than has been made out; but he was above everything a great politician, and the rebellion of the Reformers, their irregular political assemblies, their alliances with the foreigner, occupied him, far more than their ministers’ preaching. It was state within state that the reformers were seeking to found, and that the cardinal wished to upset. Seconded by the Prince of Conde, the king had put an end to the war which cost the life of the constable De Luynes, but the peace concluded at Montpellier on the 19th of November, 1622, had already received many a blow; pacific counsels amongst the Reformers were little by little dying out together with the old servants of Henry IV.; Du Plessis-Mornay had lately died (November 11, 1623) at his castle of Foret-sur-Sevres, and the direction of the party fell entirely into the hands of the Duke of Rohan, a fiery temper and soured by misfortunes as well as by continual efforts made on the part of his brother, the Duke of Soubise, more restless and less earnest than he. Hostilities broke out afresh at the beginning of the year 1625. The Reformers complained that, instead of demolishing Fort Louis, which commanded La Rochelle, all haste was being made to complete the ramparts they had hoped to see razed to the ground: a small royal fleet mustered quietly at Le Blavet, and threatened to close the sea against the Rochellese. The peace of Montpellier had left the Protestants only two surety-places, Montauban and La Rochelle; and they clung to them with desperation. On the 6th of January, 1625, Soubise suddenly entered the harbor of Le Blavet with twelve vessels, and seizing without a blow the royal ships, towed them off in triumph to La Rochelle—a fatal success, which was to cost that town dear.
The royal marine had hardly an existence; after the capture made by Soubise, help had to be requested from England and Holland; the marriage of Henrietta of France, daughter of Henry IV., with the Prince of Wales, who was soon to become Charles I., was concluded; the English promised eight ships; the treaties with the United Provinces obliged the Hollanders to supply twenty, which they would gladly have refused to send against their brethren, if they could; the cardinal even required that the ships should be commanded by French captains. “One lubber may ruin a whole fleet,” said he, “and a captain of a ship, if assured by the enemy of payment for his vessel, may undertake to burn the whole armament, and that the more easily inasmuch as he would think he was making a grand sacrifice to God, for the sake of his religion.”
Meanwhile, Soubise had broken through the feeble obstacles opposed to him by the Duke of Vendome, and, making himself master of all the trading-vessels he encountered, soon took possession of the Islands of Re and Oleron and effected descents even into Medoc, whilst the Duke of Rohan, leaving the duchess his wife, Sully’s daughter, at Castres, where he had established the seat of his government, was scouring Lower Languedoc and the Cevennes to rally his partisans. The insurrection was very undecided, and the movement very irregular. Nimes, Uzes, and Alais closed their gates; even Montauban hesitated a long while before declaring itself. The Duke of Epernon ravaged the outskirts of that place. “At night,” writes his secretary, “might be seen a thousand fires. Wheat, fruit trees, vines, and houses were the food that fed the flames.” Marshal Themine did the same all round Castres, defended by the Duchess of Rohan.
There were negotiations, nevertheless, already. Rohan and Soubise demanded to be employed against Spain in the Valteline, claiming the destruction of Fort Louis; parleys mitigated hostilities; the Duke of Soubise obtained a suspension of arms from the Dutch Admiral Haustein, and then, profiting by a favorable gust of wind, approached the fleet, set fire to the admiral’s ship, and captured five vessels, which he towed off to the Island of Re. But he paid dear for his treachery: the Hollanders, in their fury, seconded with more zeal the efforts of the Duke of Montmorency, who had just taken the command of the squadron; the Island of Re was retaken and Soubise obliged to retreat in a shallop to Oleron, leaving for “pledge his sword and his hat, which dropped off in his flight.” Nor was the naval fight more advantageous for Soubise. “The battle was fierce, but the enemy had the worst,” says Richelieu in his Memoires: “night coming on was favorable to their designs; nevertheless, they were so hotly pursued, that on the morrow, at daybreak, eight of their vessels were taken.” Soubise sailed away to England with the rest of his fleet, and the Island of Oleron surrendered.
The moment seemed to have come for crushing La Rochelle, deprived of the naval forces that protected it; but the cardinal, still at grips with Spain in the Valteline, was not sure of his allies before La Rochelle. In Holland all the churches echoed with reproaches hurled by the preachers against states that gave help against their own brethren to Catholics; at Amsterdam the mob had besieged the house of Admiral Haustein; and the Dutch fleet had to be recalled. The English Protestants were not less zealous; the Duke of Soubise had been welcomed with enthusiasm, and, though Charles I., now King of England and married, had refused to admit the fugitive to his presence, he would not restore to Louis XIII. the vessels, captured from that king and his subjects, which Soubise had brought over to Portsmouth.
The game was not yet safe; and Richelieu did not allow himself to be led astray by the anger of fanatics who dubbed him State Cardinal. “The cardinal alone, to whom God gave the blessedness of serving the king and restoring to his kingdom its ancient lustre, and to his person the power and authority meet for royal Majesty which is the next Majesty after the divine, saw in his mind the means of undoing all those tangles, clearing away all those mists, and emerging to the honor of his master from all those confusions.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. iv. p. 2.]