Cardinal de Richelieu was well descended; his merit sparkled even in his youth. He was taken notice of at the Sorbonne, and it was very soon observed that he had a strong genius and a lively fancy. He was commonly happy in the choice of his parties. He was a man of his word, unless great interests swayed him to the contrary, and in such a case he was very artful to preserve all the appearances of probity. He was not liberal, yet he gave more than he promised, and knew admirably well how to season all his favours. He was more ambitious than was consistent with the rules of morality, although it must be owned that, whenever he dispensed with them in favour of his extravagant ambition, his great merit made it almost excusable. He neither feared dangers nor yet despised them, and prevented more by his sagacity than he surmounted by his resolution. He was a hearty friend, and even wished to be beloved by the people; but though he had civility, a good aspect, and all the other qualifications to gain that love, yet he still wanted something—I know not what to call it—which is absolutely necessary in this case. By his power and royal state he debased and swallowed up the personal majesty of the King. He distinguished more judiciously than any man in the world between bad and worse, good and better, which is a great qualification in a minister. He was too apt to be impatient at mere trifles when they had relation to things of moment; but those blemishes, owing to his lofty spirit, were always accompanied with the necessary talent of knowledge to make amends for those imperfections. He had religion enough for this world. His own good sense, or else his inclination, always led him to the practice of virtue if his self-interest did not bias him to evil, which, whenever he committed it, he did so knowingly. He extended his concern for the State no further than his own life, though no minister ever did more than he to make the world believe he had the same regard for the future. In a word, all his vices were such that they received a lustre from his great fortune, because they were such as could have no other instruments to work with but great virtues. You will easily conceive that a man who possessed such excellent qualities, and appeared to have as many more,—which he had not,—found it no hard task to preserve that respect among mankind which freed him from contempt, though not from hatred.
Cardinal Mazarin’s character was the reverse of the former; his birth was mean, and his youth scandalous. He was thrashed by one Moretto, a goldsmith of Rome, as he was going out of the amphitheatre, for having played the sharper. He was a captain in a foot regiment, and Bagni, his general, told me that while he was under his command, which was but three months, he was only looked upon as a cheat. By the interest of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, he was sent as Nuncio Extraordinary to France, which office was not obtained in those days by fair means. He so tickled Chavigni by his loose Italian stories that he was shortly after introduced to Cardinal de Richelieu, who made him Cardinal with the same view which, it is thought, determined the Emperor Augustus to leave the succession of the Empire to Tiberius. He was still Richelieu’s obsequious, humble servant, notwithstanding the purple. The Queen making choice of him, for want of another, his pedigree was immediately derived from a princely family. The rays of fortune having dazzled him and everybody about him, he rose, and they glorified him for a second Richelieu, whom he had the impudence to ape, though he had nothing of him; for what his predecessor counted honourable he esteemed scandalous. He made a mere jest of religion. He promised everything without scruple; at the same time he intended to perform nothing. He was neither good-natured nor cruel, for he never remembered either good offices or bad ones. He loved himself too well, which is natural to a sordid soul; and feared himself too little, the true characteristic of those that have no regard for their reputation. He foresaw an evil well enough, because he was usually timid, but never applied a suitable remedy, because he had more fear than wisdom. He had wit, indeed, together with a most insinuating address and a gay, courtly behaviour; but a villainous heart appeared constantly through all, to such a degree as betrayed him to be a fool in adversity and a knave in prosperity. In short, he was the first minister that could be called a complete trickster, for which reason his administration, though successful and absolute, never sat well upon him, for contempt—the most dangerous disease of any State—crept insensibly into the Ministry and easily diffused its poison from the head to the members.
You will not wonder, therefore, that there were so many unlucky cross rubs in an administration which so soon followed that of Cardinal de Richelieu and was so different from it. It is certain that the imprisonment of M. de Beaufort impressed the people with a respect for Mazarin, which the lustre of his purple would never have procured from private men. Ondedei (since Bishop of Frejus) told me that the Cardinal jested with him upon the levity of the French nation on this point, and that at the end of four months the Cardinal had set himself up in his own opinion for a Richelieu, and even thought he had greater abilities. It would take up volumes to record all his faults, the least of which were very important in one respect which deserves a particular remark. As he trod in the steps of Cardinal de Richelieu, who had completely abolished all the ancient maxims of government, he went in a path surrounded with precipices, which Richelieu was aware of and took care to avoid. But Cardinal Mazarin made no use of those props by which Richelieu kept his footing. For instance, though Cardinal de Richelieu affected to humble whole bodies and societies, yet he studied to oblige individuals, which is sufficient to give you an idea of all the rest. He had indeed some unaccountable illusions, which he pushed to the utmost extremity. The most dangerous kind of illusion in State affairs is a sort of lethargy that never happens without showing pronounced symptoms. The abolishing of ancient laws, the destruction of that golden medium which was established between the Prince and the people, and the setting up a power purely and absolutely despotic, were the original causes of those political convulsions which shook France in the days of our forefathers.
Cardinal de Richelieu managed the kingdom as mountebanks do their patients, with violent remedies which put strength into it; but it was only a convulsive strength, which exhausted its vital organs. Cardinal Mazarin, like a very unskilful physician, did not observe that the vital organs were decayed, nor had he the skill to support them by the chemical preparations of his predecessor; his only remedy was to let blood, which he drew so plentifully that the patient fell into a lethargy, and our medicaster was yet so stupid as to mistake this lethargy for a real state of health. The provinces, abandoned to the rapine of the superintendents, were stifled, as it were, under the pressure of their heavy misfortunes, and the efforts they made to shake them off in the time of Richelieu added only to their weight and bitterness. The Parliaments, which had so lately groaned under tyranny, were in a manner insensible to present miseries by a too fresh and lively remembrance of their past troubles. The grandees, who had for the most part been banished from the kingdom, were glad to have returned, and therefore took their fill of ease and pleasure. If our quack had but humoured this universal indolence with soporifics, the general drowsiness might have continued much longer, but thinking it to be nothing but natural sleep, he applied no remedy at all. The disease gained strength, grew worse and worse, the patient awakened, Paris became sensible of her condition; she groaned, but nobody minded it, so that she fell into a frenzy, whereupon the patient became raving mad.
But now to come to particulars. Emeri, Superintendent of the Finances, and in my opinion the most corrupt man of the age, multiplied edicts as fast as he could find names to call them by. I cannot give you a better idea of the man than by repeating what I heard him say in full Council,—that faith was for tradesmen only, and that the Masters of Requests who urged faith to be observed in the King’s affairs deserved to be punished. This man, who had in his youth been condemned to be hanged at Lyons, absolutely governed Mazarin in all the domestic affairs of the kingdom. I mention this, among many other instances which I could produce of the same nature, to let you see that a nation does not feel the extremity of misery till its governors have lost all shame, because that is the instant when the subjects throw off all respect and awake convulsively out of their lethargy.
The Swiss seemed, as it were, crushed under the weight of their chains, when three of their powerful cantons revolted and formed themselves into a league. The Dutch thought of nothing but an entire subjection to the tyrant Duke of Alva, when the Prince of Orange, by the peculiar destiny of great geniuses, who see further into the future than all the world besides, conceived a plan and restored their liberty. The reason of all this is plain: that which causes a supineness in suffering States is the duration of the evil, which inclines the sufferers to believe it will never have an end; as soon as they have hopes of getting out of it, which never fails when the evil has arrived at a certain pitch, they are so surprised, so glad, and so transported, that they run all of a sudden into the other extreme, and are so far from thinking revolutions impossible that they suppose them easy, and such a disposition alone is sometimes able to bring them about; witness the late revolution in France. Who could have imagined, three months before the critical period of our disorders, that such a revolution could have happened in a kingdom where all the branches of the royal family were strictly united, where the Court was a slave to the Prime Minister, where the capital city and all the provinces were in subjection to him, where the armies were victorious, and where the corporations and societies seemed to have no power?—whoever, I say, had said this would have been thought a madman, not only in the judgment of the vulgar, but in the opinion of a D’Estrees or a Senneterre.
In August, 1647, there was a mighty clamour against the tariff edict imposing a general tax upon all provisions that came into Paris, which the people were resolved to bear no longer. But the gentlemen of the Council being determined to support it, the Queen consulted the members deputed from Parliament, when Cardinal Mazarin, a mere ignoramus in these affairs, said he wondered that so considerable a body as they were should mind such trifles,—an expression truly worthy of Mazarin. However, the Council at length imagining the Parliament would do it, thought fit to suppress the tariff themselves by a declaration, in order to save the King’s credit. Nevertheless, a few days after, they presented five edicts even more oppressive than the tariff, not with any hopes of having them received, but to force the Parliament to restore the tariff. Rather than admit the new ones, the Parliament consented to restore the old one, but with so many qualifications that the Court, despairing to find their account in it, published a decree of the Supreme Council annulling that of the Parliament with all its modifications. But the Chamber of Vacations answered it by another, enjoining the decree of Parliament to be put in execution. The Council, seeing they could get no money by this method, acquainted the Parliament that, since they would receive no new edicts, they could do no less than encourage the execution of such edicts as they had formerly ratified; and thereupon they trumped up a declaration which had been registered two years before for the establishment of the Chamber of Domain, which was a terrible charge upon the people, had very pernicious consequences, and which the Parliament had passed, either through a surprise or want of better judgment. The people mutinied, went in crowds to the Palace, and used very abusive language to the President de Thore, Emeri’s son. The Parliament was obliged to pass a decree against the mutineers.
The Court, overjoyed to see the Parliament and the people together by the ears, supported the decree by a regiment of French and Swiss Guards. The Parisians were alarmed, and got into the belfries of three churches in the street of Saint Denis, where the guards were posted. The Provost ran to acquaint the Court that the city was just taking arms. Upon which they ordered the troops to retire, and pretended they were posted there for no other end than to attend the King as he went to the Church of Notre Dame; and the better to cover their design, the King went next day in great pomp to the said church, and the day after he went to Parliament, without giving notice of his coming till very late the night before, and carried with him five or six edicts more destructive than the former. The First President spoke very boldly against bringing the King into the House after this manner, to surprise the members and infringe upon their liberty of voting. Next day the Masters of Requests, to whom one of these edicts, confirmed in the King’s presence, had added twelve colleagues, met and took a firm resolution not to admit of this new creation. The Queen sent for them, told them they were very pretty gentlemen to oppose the King’s will, and forbade them to come to Council. Instead of being frightened, they were the more provoked, and, going into the Great Hall, demanded that they might have leave to enter their protest against the edict for creating new members, which was granted.