The state of France at that time was curious, and worthy of a short description. It shall be very short, reader, for I am aware how tiresome such details are to three classes of people,—to those who know every thing, to those who know nothing, and to those who want to "get on with the story." But it will save us a world of trouble hereafter, and spare us the use of that bad beast, Explanation, which is always trotting with the wrong leg foremost.
In England, the Wars of the Roses, the salutary severity of that great king, Richard the Third, the avarice of his successor, the tyranny of the eighth Henry and his two daughters, had swept away the exorbitant power and privileges which the feudal system had conferred upon the high nobility. But in France not even the wise rigor of some of her kings—not even the sanguinary struggles of the League—had effected nearly so much. Indeed, the termination of the wars of the League had wellnigh undone what had previously been accomplished toward restricting the inordinate independence of the nobles; for Henry IV., after having conquered his enemies, was obliged to buy them, and to make concessions which would have rendered the sceptre powerless in any hand less mighty than his own.
When the knife of Ravaillac placed Louis XIII. on the throne of France, troubles of various kinds succeeded, which not only weakened the royal authority but impoverished the kingdom; and at the moment when the Cardinal de Richelieu laid his strong hand upon the reins of government, the weak monarch, feeling his own incompetence, had fallen almost into a state of despair from the troubles and dangers around him. But the words of an author who wrote while despotism still existed theoretically in France will give us a good picture of the ideas of the day, though we may not coincide with him in his conclusions.
"Louis," says the writer of whom I speak, "to excuse the timidity of his council, did not fail to repeat the statements made to him every day about the weakness of his kingdom, and to assert that by a firmer course he would run the risk of bringing wars upon his hands which he could not support. The prelate [Richelieu] overthrew all these objections, by showing the young monarch the resources of France,—her immense population, the bravery of her inhabitants, the fertility of her soil, the abundance and variety of her productions, her beautiful forests, her quarries, the riches of her mines,—above all, her wine and her salt, gifts of Nature which other nations are obliged to come to her and ask for; her rivers almost all navigable, so favorable to internal commerce; her happy position between two seas, favorable to external; the strength of her frontiers, defended by rivers and mountains, natural ramparts, or by cities which a little art would render impregnable; in fine, the very constitution of her government, which gave to a single man the power to put all these resources in action by one word and in one instant.
"Richelieu then proceeded to assert that the principal cause of the depression of France amongst the nations was that she tolerated various religions in her bosom, and doubtless he had determined to root out that evil; but there was another which he clearly saw, but concealed from the king, and against which he afterward waged a continual war, by art, by arms, and by the axe: this was the independent power of the nobles, which, in fact, gave all its strength to religious faction."
In that day, every high noble had his city or his castle, which he did not scruple, on slight pretexts, to garrison against his sovereign, and very often resisted the royal troops with so much success as to force the monarch to purchase his submission. Such was the case, but two or three years before the time of which I write, with the Marquis de la Force at Montauban; such the case with the Count de Coligni at Aïgues Mortes. A marshal's baton, a large sum of money, the government of a province, the revenues of an abbey, were the reward of acts which Richelieu resolved should in future be rewarded by exile or the axe.
A report of the surprise of one of these feudal fortresses at this very period gives a vivid picture not only of the state of France in a time of profound peace, but of the strength of the castle itself. "They [the citizens of Château Renard]," says Monsieur de Fougeret, in his Relation, "obtained possession with the armed hand on the 27th May, 1621, at four o'clock in the afternoon, of the fortress called the Castellet, which commanded their town, and in which the lords of Chatillon had kept a garrison for the last twenty-five years. The walls were four toises and a half in thickness; and there were within many chambers, casemates, prisons, dungeons, cellars, a well, ovens, hand-mills, battering-pieces, falconets, powder, ammunition of every kind, and a private subterranean passage to come and go under cover all about the said fortress, all terraced within."
Instead of attempting to remedy this state of things, Louis had recognised and acted upon the system which he had found in existence, and about this time, in the case of Richelieu himself, not only permitted him to maintain a guard of musketeers, but gave him the town of Brouage "as a place of surety."