[254] He was so uneasy about the sin he had committed, that before his death he intreated the Protestant marshals to change their creed: ‘Il ne voulut pas mourir sans avoir exhorté de sa propre bouche les maréchaux de la Force et de Chatillon à se faire Catholiques.’ Benoist, Hist. de l'Edit de Nantes, vol. ii. p. 612. The same circumstance is mentioned by Le Vassor, Hist. de Louis XIII, vol. x. part ii. p. 785.
[255] Louis XIII. died in May 1643; and Turenne was made marshal in the September following. Lavallée, Hist. des Français, vol. iii. pp. 148, 151.
[256] Sismondi (Hist. des Français, vol. xxiv. p. 65) makes the appointment of Gassion in 1644; according to Montglat (Mémoires, vol. i. p. 437) it was at the end of 1643. There are some singular anecdotes of Gassion in Les Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux, vol. v. pp. 167–180; and an account of his death in Mém. de Motteville, vol. ii. p. 290, from which it appears that he remained a Protestant to the last.
[257] The Pope especially was offended by this alliance (Ranke, die Päpste, vol. iii. p. 158, compared with Vaughan's Cromwell, vol. i. p. 343, vol. ii. p. 124); and, judging from the language of Clarendon, the orthodox party in England was irritated by it. Clarendon's Hist. of the Rebellion, pp. 699, 700. Contemporary notices of this union between the cardinal and the regicide, will be found in Mém. de Retz, vol. i. p. 349; Mém. de Montglat, vol. ii. p. 478, vol. iii. p. 23; Lettres de Patin, vol. ii. pp. 183, 302, 426; Marchand, Dict. Historique, vol. ii. p. 56; Mem. of Sir Philip Warwick, p. 377; Harris's Lives of the Stuarts, vol. iii. p. 393.
[258] De Retz (Mémoires, vol. i. p. 59), who knew Richelieu, calls Mazarin ‘son disciple.’ And at p. 65 he adds, ‘comme il marchoit sur les pas du cardinal de Richelieu, qui avoit achevé de détruire toutes les anciennes maximes de l'état.’ Compare Mém. de Motteville, vol. ii. p. 18; and Mém. de la Rochefoucauld, vol. i. p. 444.
[259] On the open affront to the Pope by this treaty, see Ranke, die Päpste, vol. iii. p. 159: ‘An dem pyrenäischen Frieden nahm er auch nicht einmal mehr einen scheinbaren Antheil: man vermied es seine Abgeordneten zuzulassen: kaum wurde seiner noch darin gedacht.’ The consequences and the meaning of all this are well noticed by M. Ranke.
[260] ‘La presse jouissait d'une entière liberté pendant les troubles de la Fronde, et le public prenait un tel intérêt aux débats politiques, que les pamphlets se débitaient quelquefois au nombre de huit et dix mille exemplaires.’ Sainte–Aulaire, Hist. de la Fronde, vol. i. p. 299. Tallemant des Réaux, who wrote immediately after the Fronde, says (Historiettes, vol. iv. p. 74), ‘Durant la Fronde, qu'on imprimoit tout.’ And Omer Talon, with the indignation natural to a magistrate, mentions, that in 1649, ‘toutes sortes de libelles et de diffamations se publioient hautement par la ville sans permission du magistrat.’ Mém. d'Omer Talon, vol. ii. p. 466. For further evidence of the great importance of the press in France in the middle of the seventeenth century, see Mém. de Lenet, vol. i. p. 162; Mém. de Motteville, vol. iii. pp. 288, 289; Lettres de Patin, vol. i. p. 432, vol. ii. p. 517; Monteil, Hist. des divers Etats, vol. vii. p. 175.
In England, the Long Parliament succeeded to the licensing authority of the Star-chamber (Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 152); but it is evident from the literature of that time, that for a considerable period the power was in reality in abeyance. Both parties attacked each other freely through the press; and it is said that between the breaking out of the civil war and the restoration, there were published from 30,000 to 50,000 pamphlets. Morgan's Phœnix Britannicus, 1731, 4to. pp. iii. 557; Carlyle's Cromwell, vol. i. p. 4; Southey's Commonplace Book, third series, p. 449. See also on this great movement of the press, Bates's Account of the Late Troubles, part i. p. 78; Bulstrode's Memoirs, p. 4; Howell's Letters, p. 354; Hunt's Hist. of Newspapers, vol. i. p. 45; Clarendon's Hist. of the Rebellion, p. 81; Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. iv. pp. 86, 102.
[261] Dugald Stewart (Philos. of the Mind, vol. i. p. 357) says, ‘Nothing can be more just than the observation of Fontenelle, that “the number of those who believe in a system already established in the world, does not, in the least, add to its credibility; but that the number of those who doubt of it, has a tendency to diminish it.”’ Compare with this Newman on Development, Lond. 1845, p. 31; and the remark of Hylas in Berkeley's Works, edit. 1843, vol. i. pp. 151, 152, first dialogue.
[262] Compare Capefigue's Richelieu, vol. i. p. 293, with a remarkable passage in Mém. de Rohan, vol. i. p. 317; where Rohan contrasts the religious wars he was engaged in during the administration of Richelieu, with those very different wars which had been waged in France a little earlier.