Marshal Bassompierre was returning from his embassy to Switzerland, having secured the alliance of the Thirteen Cantons in the affair of the Valteline, when it was noised abroad that peace with Spain was signed. Count du Fargis, it was said, had, in an excess of zeal, taken upon himself to conclude without waiting for orders from Paris. Bassompierre was preparing a grand speech against this unexpected peace, but during the night he reflected that the cardinal had perhaps been not so much astonished as he would have made out. “I gave up my speech,” says he, “and betook myself to my jubilee.”
The Huguenots, on their side, yielded at the entreaties of the ambassadors who had been sent by the English to France, “with orders to beg the Rochellese to accept the peace which the king had offered them,” and who omitted neither arguments nor threats in order to arrive at that conclusion; whence it came to pass that, by a course of conduct full of unwonted dexterity, the Huguenots were brought to consent to peace for fear of that with Spain, and the Spaniards to make peace for fear of that with the Huguenots.
The greatest difficulty the cardinal had to surmount was in the king’s council; he was not ignorant that by getting peace made with the Huguenots, and showing him that he was somewhat inclined to favor their cause with the king, he might expose himself to the chance of getting into bad odor at Rome. But in no other way could he arrive at his Majesty’s ends. His cloth made him suspected by the Huguenots; it was necessary, therefore, to behave so that they should think him favorable to them, for by so doing he found means of waiting more conveniently for an opportunity of reducing them to the terms to which all subjects ought to be reduced in a state, that is to say, inability to form any separate body, and liability to accept their sovereign’s wishes.
“It was a grievous thing for him to bear, to see himself so unjustly suspected at the court of Rome, and by those who affected the name of zealous Catholics; but he resolved to take patiently the rumors that were current about him, apprehending that if he had determined to clear himself of them effectually, he might not find that course of advantage to his master or the public.”
The cardinal, in fact, took it patiently, revising and then confirming the treaty with Spain, and imposing on the Huguenots a peace so hard, that they would never have accepted it but for the hope of obtaining at a later period some assuagements, with the help of England, which refused formally to help them to carry on the war. At the first parleys the king had said, “I am disposed enough towards peace; I am willing to grant it to Languedoc and the other provinces. As for La Rochelle, that is another thing.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. iii.] It was ultimately La Rochelle that paid the expenses of the war, biding the time when the proud city, which had resisted eight kings in succession, would have to succumb before Louis XIII. and his all-powerful minister. Already her independence was threatened on all sides; the bastions and new fortifications had to be demolished; no armed vessel of war might be stationed in her harbor. “The way was at last open,” said the cardinal, “to the extermination of the Huguenot party, which, for a hundred years past, had divided the kingdom.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. iii. p. 17.]
The peace of 1626, then, was but a preliminary to war. Richelieu was preparing for it by land and sea; vessels of war were being built, troops were being levied; and the temper of England furnished a pretext for commencing the struggle. King Charles I., at the instigation of his favorite the Duke of Buckingham, had suddenly and unfeelingly dismissed the French servants of the queen his wife, without giving her even time to say good by to them, insomuch that “the poor princess, hearing their voices in the court-yard, dashed to the window, and, breaking the glass with her head, clung with her hands to the bars to show herself to her women and take the last look at them. The king indignantly dragged her back with so great an effort that he tore her hands right away.” Louis XIII. had sent Marshal Bassompierre to England to complain of the insult done to his sister; the Duke of Buckingham wished to go in person to France to arrange the difference, but the cardinal refused. “Has Buckingham ever undertaken any foreign commission without going away dissatisfied and offended with the princes to whom he was sent?” said Cardinal Richelieu to the king. So the favorite of Charles I. resolved to go to France “in other style and with other attendants than he had as yet done; having determined to win back the good graces of the Parliament and the people of England by the succor he was about to carry to the oppressed Protestant churches,” he pledged his property; he sold the trading-vessels captured on the coasts of France; and on the 17th of July, 1627, he set sail with a hundred and twenty vessels, heading for La Rochelle. Soubise was on board his ship; and the Duke of Rohan, notified of the enterprise, had promised to declare himself the moment the English set foot in France. Already he was preparing his manifesto to the churches, avowing that he had summoned the English to his legitimate defence, and that, since the king had but lately been justified in employing the arms of the Hollanders to defeat them, much more reasonably might he appeal to those of the English their brethren for protection against him.
This time the cardinal was ready; he had concluded an alliance with Spain against England, “declaring merely to the King of Spain that he was already at open war with England, and that he would put in practice with all the power of his forces against his own states all sorts of hostilities permissible in honorable warfare, which his Majesty also promised to do by the month of June, 1628, at the latest.” The king set out to go and take in person the command of the army intended to give the English their reception. He had gone out ill from the Parliament, where he had been to have some edicts enregistered. “I did nothing but tremble all the time I was holding my bed of justice,” he said to Bassompierre. “It is there, however, that you make others tremble,” replied the marshal. Louis XIII. was obliged to halt at Villeroy, where the cardinal remained with him, “being all day at his side, and most frequently not leaving him at night; he, nevertheless, had his mind constantly occupied with giving orders, taking care above everything to let it appear before the king that he had no fear; he preferred to put himself in peril of being blamed or ruined in well-doing, rather than, in order to secure himself, to do anything which might be a cause of illness to his Majesty.” In point of fact, Richelieu was not without anxiety, for Sieur de Toiras, a young favorite of the king’s, to whom he had entrusted the command in the Island of Re, had not provided for the defence of that place so well as had been expected; Buckingham had succeeded in effecting his descent. The French were shut up in the Fort of St. Martin, scarcely finished as it was, and ill-provisioned. The cardinal “saw to it directly, sending of his own money because that of the king was not to be so quickly got at, and because he had at that time none to spare; he despatched Abbe Marcillac, who was in his confidence, to see that everything was done punctually and no opportunity lost. He did not trouble himself to make reports of all the despatches that passed, and all the orders that were within less than a fortnight given on the subject of this business during the king’s illness, in order to provide for everything that was necessary, and to prepare all things in such wise that the king and France might reap from them the fruit which was shortly afterwards gathered in.”
Meanwhile La Rochelle had closed her gates to the English, and the old Duchess of Rohan had been obliged to leave the town in order to bring Soubise in with her. “Before taking any resolution,” replied the Rochellese authorities to the entreaties of the duke, who was pressing them to lend assistance to the English, “we must consult the whole body of the religion of which La Rochelle is only one member.” An assembly was already convoked to that end at Uzes; and when it met, on the 11th of September, the Duke of Rohan communicated to the deputies from the churches the letter of the inhabitants of La Rochelle, “not such an one,” he said, “as he could have desired, but such as he must make the best of.” The King of England had granted his aid and promised not to relax until the Reformers had firm repose and solid contentment, provided that they seconded his efforts. “I bid you thereto in God’s name,” he added, “and for my part, were I alone, abandoned of all, I am determined to prosecute this sacred cause even to the last drop of my blood and to the last gasp of my life.” The assembly fully approved of their chief’s behavior, accepting “with gratitude the King of England’s powerful intervention, without, however, loosing themselves from the humble and inviolable submission which they owed to their king.” The consuls of the town of Milhau were bolder in their reservations. “We have at divers time experienced,” they wrote to the Duke of Rohan, whilst refusing to join the movement, “that violence is no certain means of obtaining observation of our edicts, for force extorts many promises, but the hatred it engenders prevents them from taking effect.” The duke was obliged to force an entrance into this small place. La Rochelle had just renounced her neutrality and taken sides with the English, “flattering ourselves,” they said in their proclamation, “that, having good men for our witnesses and God for our judge, we shall experience the same assistance from His goodness as our fathers had aforetime.”