This was Cardinal Richelieu’s distinction, that all his contemporaries, in the same way as Voiture, identified the mishaps and the successes of their country with his own fortunes, and that upon him alone were fixed the eyes of Europe, whether friendly or hostile, when it supported or when it fought against France.
For four years the war was carried on with desperation by land and sea in the Low Countries, in Germany, and in Italy, with alternations of success and reverse. The actors disappeared one after another from the scene; the emperor, Ferdinand II., had died on the 15th of February, 1637;—the election of his son, Ferdinand III., had not been recognized by France and Sweden; Bernard of Saxe-Weimar succumbed, at thirty-four years of age, on the 15th of July, 1639, after having beaten, in the preceding year, the celebrated John van Weert, whom he sent a prisoner to Paris. At his death the landgravate of Elsass reverted to France, together with the town of Brisach, which he had won from the Imperialists.
The Duke of Savoy had died in 1637; his widow, Christine of France, daughter of Henry IV., was, so far as her brother’s cause in Italy was concerned, but a poor support; but Count d’Harcourt, having succeeded, as head of the army, Cardinal Valette, who died in 1638, had retaken Turin and Casale from the Imperialists in the campaign of 1640; two years later, in the month of June, 1642, the Princes Thomas and Maurice, brothers-in-law of the Duchess Christine, wearied out by the maladdress and haughtiness of the Spaniards, attached themselves definitively to the interests of France, drove out the Spanish garrisons from Nice and Ivrea, in concert with the Duke of Longueville, and retook the fortress of Tortona as well as all Milaness to the south of the Po. Perpignan, besieged for more than two years past by the king’s armies, capitulated at the same moment. Spain, hard pressed at home by the insurrection of the Catalans and the revolt of Portugal at the same time, both supported by Richelieu, saw Arras fall into the hands of France (August 9, 1640), and the plot contrived with the Duke of Bouillon and the Count of Soissons fail at the battle of La Marfee, where this latter prince was killed on the 16th of July, 1641. In Germany, Marshal Guebriant and the Swedish general Torstenson, so paralyzed that he had himself carried in a litter to the head of his army, had just won back from the empire Silesia, Moravia, and nearly all Saxony; the chances of war were everywhere favorable to France, a just recompense for the indomitable perseverance of Cardinal Richelieu through good and evil fortune. “The great tree of the house of Austria was shaken to its very roots, and he had all but felled that trunk which with its two branches covers the North and the West, and throws a shadow over the rest of the earth.” [Lettres de Malherbe, t. iv.] The king, for a moment shaken in his fidelity towards his minister by the intrigues of Cinq-Mars, had returned to the cardinal with all the impetus of the indignation caused by the guilty treaty made by his favorite with Spain. All Europe thought as the young captain in the guards, afterwards Marshal Fabert, who, when the king said to him, “I know that my army is divided into two factions, royalists and cardinalists; which are you for?” answered, “Cardinalists, sir, for the cardinal’s party is yours.” The cardinal and France were triumphing together, but the conqueror was dying; Cardinal Richelieu had just been removed from Ruel to Paris.
For several months past, the cardinal’s health, always precarious, had taken a serious turn; it was from his sick-bed that he, a prey to cruel agonies, directed the movements of the army, and, at the same time, the prosecution of Cinq-Mars. All at once his chest was attacked; and the cardinal felt that he was dying. On the 2d of December, 1642, public prayers were ordered in all the churches; the king went from St. Germain to see his minister. The cardinal was quite prepared. “I have this satisfaction,” he said, “that I have never deserted the king, and that I leave his kingdom exalted, and all his enemies abased.” He commended his relatives to his Majesty, “who on their behalf will remember my services;” then, naming the two secretaries of state, Chavigny and De Noyers, he added, “Your Majesty has Cardinal Mazarin; I believe him to be capable of serving the king.” And he handed to Louis XIII. a proclamation which he had just prepared for the purpose of excluding the Duke of Orleans from any right to the regency in case of the king’s death. The preamble called to mind that the king had five times already pardoned his brother, recently engaged in a new plot against him.
The king had left the cardinal, but without returning to St. Germain. He remained at the Louvre. Richelieu had in vain questioned the physicians as to how long he had to live. One, only, dared to go beyond commonplace hopes. “Monsignor,” he said, “in twenty-four hours you will be dead or cured.” “That is the way to speak!” said the cardinal; and he sent for the priest of St. Eustache, his parish. As they were bringing into his chamber the Holy Eucharist, he stretched out his hand, and, “There,” said he, “is my Judge before whom I shall soon appear; I pray him with all my heart to condemn me if I have ever had any other aim than the welfare of religion and of the state.” The priest would have omitted certain customary questions, but, “Treat me as the commonest of Christians,” said the cardinal. And when he was asked to pardon his enemies, “I never had any but those of the state,” answered the dying man.
The cardinal’s family surrounded his bed; and the attendance was numerous. The Bishop of Lisieux, Cospdan, a man of small wits, but of sincere devoutness, listened attentively to the firm speech, the calm declarations, of the expiring minister. “So much self-confidence appalls me,” he said below his breath. Richelieu died as he had lived, without scruples and without delicacies of conscience, absorbed by his great aim, and but little concerned about the means he had employed to arrive at it. “I believe, absolutely, all the truths taught by the church,” he had said to his confessor, and this faith sufficed for his repose. The memory of the scaffolds he had caused to be erected did not so much as recur to his mind. “I have loved justice, and not vengeance. I have been severe towards some in order to be kind towards all,” he had said in his will, written in Latin. He thought just the same on his death-bed.
The king left him, not without emotion and regret. The cardinal begged Madame d’Aiguillon, his niece, to withdraw. “She is the one whom I have loved most,” he said. Those around him were convulsed with weeping. A Carmelite whom he had sent for turned to those present, and, “Let those,” he said, “who cannot refrain from showing the excess of their weeping and their lamentation leave the room; let us pray for this soul.” In presence of the majesty of death and eternity human grandeur disappears irrevocably; the all-powerful minister was at that moment only this soul. A last gasp announced his departure; Cardinal Richelieu was dead.
He was dead, but his work survived him. On the very evening of the 3d of December, Louis XIII. called to his council Cardinal Mazarin; and next day he wrote to the Parliaments and governors of provinces, “God having been pleased to take to himself the Cardinal de Richelieu, I have resolved to preserve and keep up all establishments ordained during his ministry, to follow out all projects arranged with him for affairs abroad and at home, in such sort that there shall not be any change. I have continued in my councils the same persons as served me then, and I have called thereto Cardinal Mazarin, of whose capacity and devotion to my service I have had proof, and of whom I feel no less sure than if he had been born amongst my subjects.” Scarcely had the most powerful kings yielded up their last breath, when their wishes had been at once forgotten: Cardinal Richelieu still governed in his grave.
