The ascendancy of France, 1598-1715

by Henry Offley Wakeman

It is easy to fix the eyes so intently upon the destructive side of Richelieu’s war with the nobles as to forget that in his sight it was by far the least important part of his work. The execution of traitors and peculators, the banishment of conspirators and intrigantes, were necessary steps towards the abolition of their political power, not the satisfaction of private vengeance. As with the Huguenots, so with the nobles, he did not wish to root them out, but to make them powerless for evil. As long as they enjoyed in right of their birth political power, based upon personal privilege and territorial possessions, so long would they refuse absolutely to render themselves amenable to the new institution of the prime-ministership, and would be always in danger of preferring the interests of their order to those of the state. When once they had been deprived of territorial power, they would naturally become the foremost servants of that Crown of which they had before been the rivals. They would be eager to serve, where before they had been determined to rule. Throughout the government of Richelieu the work of centralisation goes steadily on. A powerful structure of royal government is gradually built up, and the abortive plots, and the subsequent executions, mark the chafings of those who felt that power was slipping steadily away from them, and by a sure instinct directed their efforts against the man who was identified with the system which they hated. The destruction of the feudal castles, the development of the professional army, the substitution of royal administrative officers for those of the territorial nobles in Brittany and Languedoc, after the rebellions of Vendôme and Montmorency, the administration by the Crown directly through its own officials of the Huguenot towns, after the peace of Alais, and of Lorraine and Sedan after their conquest, the establishment of a royal post throughout the kingdom, were all steps in the direction of undermining the political power of the nobles. Appointment of Intendants, 1637. Finally in 1637 came the greatest blow of all. For many years Richelieu had been in the habit of appointing royal commissioners, under the name of Intendants, to take cognisance of certain matters of local administration, usually of a judicial nature. In 1637 by a royal edict, he appointed Intendants in each province, and placed in their hands the whole financial, judicial and police administration. The effect of this was to concentrate powers, which had hitherto been enjoyed by the territorial nobility and the local administrative bodies, wholly in the hands of officials appointed by the minister and responsible to him alone. It created in fact a permanent civil service of professional men of the middle class, entirely dependent upon the royal favour, and thus did much to foster the growth of absolute power, and to give stability to the government, while checking the separatist tendencies of the local authorities.

The Regency of 1643.

The value of the administrative system organised by Richelieu soon became evident, when in the year 1643 France found herself once more threatened by the minority of the king and the weakness of a regency. The great cardinal maintained after his death the social and political order to the preservation of which he had devoted his life. The strength of the bureaucracy and the memory of the government of Richelieu alone preserved the authority of the monarchy amid the follies and the treasons of the Fronde. Richelieu himself died on the 4th of December 1642, and Louis followed him to the grave on the 14th of May 1643, leaving the crown to his infant son only four and a half years old. It was an anxious crisis for France. Louis XIII. in his distrust of his wife, Anne of Austria, whose influence had been from the time of her marriage uniformly exercised against the policy of the king and Richelieu, had endeavoured to control her exercise of political power after his death by nominating in his will a council of state, without whose advice she was powerless to act. But Anne, whose character developed with her responsibilities, would have none of such restrictions. Going to the Parlement de Paris she asked them boldly to annul the will of her husband in the interests of herself and her son. The Parlement were by no means loth to add to their political privileges that of pronouncing a decisive word on the government of France. Without hesitation in their own interests they cancelled the will of the late king, suppressed the council of regency, and handed over the government of the country to Anne absolutely. It was an ominous thing that so soon after the death of Richelieu personal interests should again come to the front. But fortunately for France among those personal interests one was quickly seen to predominate over all others, which ensured the continuation of the policy of the great cardinal. Mazarin appointed chief minister. Ever since the death of the Père Joseph, Richelieu had intrusted the details of his foreign policy to the management of the astute Italian Giulio Mazzarini, who attracted his notice in the negotiations with the Pope in 1628, entered the service of France at his request in 1639, was rewarded with a cardinal’s hat in 1641, and was recommended to Louis by Richelieu as his successor in the prime ministership on his deathbed in 1642. By his cleverness, tact, and the gracefulness of his manners, Mazarin succeeded in making a deep impression upon the fastidious and loveless Anne of Austria. Surrounded by interested and selfish nobles, anxiously solicitous for the welfare of her son, she felt the necessity of a stronger arm on which to lean, and a sympathetic heart to which she might cling, and she chose Mazarin as the person whom she could intrust with the confidences of her womanly nature. Whether they were eventually secretly married or not is one of the unsolved problems of history, but that during the rest of their lives they were united by the strongest bonds of mutual affection and respect is beyond a doubt. To the astonishment of all who were not in the secret, Anne signalised her assumption of power by confirming Mazarin in the position of chief minister to which he had been designated by Richelieu, by continuing the foreign and domestic policy of the great cardinal, and by exiling afresh the dukes of Vendôme Mercoeur and Guise and the duchess of Chevreuse who were already portioning out the vengeance they would take on the cardinalists.

Character of Mazarin.

Cardinal Mazarin was a very different character from his great predecessor. He was altogether of meaner mould. Richelieu was a man of original genius, who had made for himself his own position in the world, and had been the architect of his own fame. Mazarin would never have emerged from the ruck of mankind had not Richelieu led the way and given him a task to perform. It was his business to maintain, carry on, develop, that of Richelieu to create and establish. Soft and conciliatory in manner, graceful in address, tactful and considerate in business, deferential without being obsequious in conversation, he disarmed his opponents instead of conquering them, he persuaded instead of frightening them. Management not action was his strong point, finesse and diplomacy not the scaffold and the sword his weapons. An absolute master of dissimulation, he crept catlike through life, the outward picture of trustful innocence, concealing a callous heart and poisoned claws. It was a character as hateful to the open-hearted Frenchman as to the honest Englishman, and even if it had not been disfigured by the grossest avarice, could never have made itself tolerable to either. Italian to the backbone in his suppleness of character, his love of finesse, his courtly manners, his advancement of his relations, his art collections of rare books and sculptures, in the meanness of his avarice and in the prodigality of his display, he was looked upon by the French nobles and the bulk of the French people as a foreigner, who, having by unworthy arts made himself the master of the affections of a silly woman, a foreigner like himself, had fastened like a leech upon France and was sucking its lifeblood with insatiable voracity. Nothing can exceed the virulence of the hatred with which Mazarin was regarded. Not even the triumphs of the Thirty Years’ War and the peace of Westphalia, not even the battle of Rocroy and the intoxicating cup of glory which he offered to France could save him from the indiscriminating and loathsome abuse showered on him by that strange outburst of patriotism and selfishness, liberty and frivolity, known as the Fronde, of which hatred to him was the chief factor.

Outbreak of the Fronde.

Ever since the dissolution of the Estates General of 1614, the Parlement de Paris had been growing in political importance. The hereditary nature of the offices of its members, the increased consideration shown to the classes from which they sprang by Richelieu in his war against the nobility, the double appeal to them in 1610 and 1643 to settle the government of France had all done much to persuade them of their power. The success of the rebellions against the royal authority in Spain and in England no doubt stimulated their desire to strike a blow for themselves and for liberty. An ill-advised imposition of an octroi duty upon all commodities entering Paris, issued in January 1648, gave them the opportunity of playing the part of constitutional leaders. The Parlement refused to register the edict. The court on this brought the boy-king down to the Parlement, and in a lit de justice the registration was effected. Constitutional claims of the Parlement, 1648. But the absurdity of trying to settle a grave constitutional question by the intervention of a boy of nine years old was too patent even for lawyers to swallow, and on the 16th of January the Parlement solemnly pronounced the registration illegal and invalid. A compromise was arrived at with regard to the particular question at issue, but the Parlement, so far from surrendering its political claims, appointed a committee consisting of representatives of its three chambers to take the reform of the state into consideration. On the 29th of June this representative committee called the Chambre de S. Louis issued its programme. Its programme of reform.It demanded the suppression of the Intendants, the reduction of the taille by a quarter, that every one arrested by order of the government should be brought before a magistrate within twenty-four hours of his arrest, and that the Parlement should have control over taxation. Here were the germs of a constitutional reform, which, if it could have been carried out, might have saved France from the worst evils of despotism without seriously impairing the royal authority. The establishment of a check on the financial administration, and of the principle of Habeas Corpus, even though lodged in an unrepresentative body like the Parlement, would have at least saved France from the collapse of the next century, and might have been the beginning of true constitutional life. But it was not to be. Mazarin appeared to yield to the storm, issued some of the decrees asked for, and waited his opportunity. The news of Condé’s victory at Lens seemed to be the opportunity he desired. Arrest and release of Broussel. Under cover of a Te Deum sung in Nôtre Dame for the victory, Broussel the leader of the agitation against the court was arrested and put into prison. When this became known all Paris was seized with uncontrollable excitement. The long suppressed hatred of Mazarin burst out in fury. Barricades were raised. The citizens were armed and the Parlement accompanied by a furious and enthusiastic crowd marched in a body to demand the release of Broussel. The court was again obliged to yield, and Broussel was set at liberty, but as before Mazarin only drew back in the hope of making his final spring more effective. The peace of Westphalia would shortly put a disciplined army at his disposal, and then the position of the government would be impregnable. Paris might rage as much as it liked, but the days had gone by when the caprice of Paris decided the fortunes of France. Never was politician more mistaken. On the 13th of September the court withdrew to Ruel to free itself from the constant danger of tumults. Paris was immediately in an uproar. Acceptance of the reforms by the court, 1648. Persuaded by the clever and unscrupulous Gondi, bishop-coadjutor of Paris, a man who had nothing ecclesiastical about him except his title, Condé the military hero of the hour declared for the Parlement, and the court once more following the favourite policy of Mazarin had to procrastinate. It returned to Paris, and on the 24th of October 1648 published an edict accepting and enforcing the whole of the demands of the Chambre de S. Louis.

Unpopularity of the prime-ministership.

Thus far the struggle had been in its main aspects constitutional. The Parlement de Paris, aided by the populace of the city, and taking advantage of the unpopularity of Mazarin, was endeavouring to curb the caprice of an irresponsible prime minister by assuming to itself control over the finances, and obtaining for all Frenchmen security against arbitrary arrest. Men felt vaguely that the constitution of France had altered in a way contrary to their interests of recent years. It was one thing to acknowledge the personal authority of the king as supreme, when it had to be exercised largely through local governors who were practically independent, and was from its very nature subject to the limitations which necessarily followed from the different characters of the supreme rulers. It was quite another thing to acknowledge that that personal supremacy could be delegated, and to be required to pay the same implicit obedience to a prime minister ruling through a bureaucracy of his own nominees when the king himself was a minor. The pressure of despotic rule had hitherto been little felt in France by the noble or the professional classes. They did not object to acknowledge and obey the will of a Henry IV., while a Henry III. hardly presumed to ask them to do so. It was quite a different thing when they were called upon to pay implicit reverence to a Mazarin following a Richelieu, when Louis XIII. seemed a fainéant and Louis XIV. was a boy. And behind the actual revolt against the irresponsible will of the minister lay the old rivalry between local authority and centralised administration. All local authorities whether of the governors or of the estates or of the Parlements had suffered under the centralising hand of Richelieu. In many cases they had been rooted out. France was becoming a tabula rasa, on which the hand of the king, or, worse still, of the minister, was alone visible. Importance of the reforms. So the Parlement de Paris felt, when it embarked on the struggle with the Crown, that it had behind it not merely the turbulence of a great city, or the bastard enthusiasm produced by professional agitators, but also a mass of thoughtful public opinion, traditions which lay deep in French history, and the political instincts of a growing nation. The example of England was sufficient to show that if it could, by whatever machinery, put an effectual check on the power of arbitrary taxation and the power of arbitrary imprisonment enjoyed by the government, it would have planted a seed from which the tree of liberty would assuredly spring. Of the four chief points of the charter of reform wrung from the Crown in October 1648, two, the reduction of the taille and the abolition of the Intendants, were merely passing remedies for special grievances of the time; the other two, the control over taxation and the Habeas Corpus, enunciated principles of government for the future, which if they could have been enforced, would have infallibly altered the whole history of France.

Weakness of the Parlement.