Memoirs of Jean François Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz — Complete

by Jean François Paul de Gondi de Retz

There is no affair but has its critical minute, which a bold statesmanship knows how to lay hold of, and which, if missed, especially in the revolution of kingdoms, you run the great risk of losing altogether.

Every one now found their advantage in the declaration,—that is, if they understood their own interest. The Parliament had the honour of reestablishing public order. The Princes, too, had their share in this honour, and the first-fruits of it, which were respect and security. The people had a considerable comfort in it, by being eased of a load of above sixty millions; and if the Cardinal had had but the sense to make a virtue of necessity, which is one of the most necessary qualifications of a minister of State, he might, by an advantage always inseparable from favourites, have appropriated to himself the greatest part of the merit, even of those things he had most opposed.

But these advantages were all lost through the most trivial considerations. The people, upon the discontinuation of the Parliamentary assemblies, resumed their savage temper, and were scared by the approach of a few troops at which it was ridiculous to take the least umbrage. The Parliament was too apt to give ear to every groundless tale of the non-execution of their declarations. The Duc d’Orleans saw all the good he was capable of doing and part of the evil he had power to prevent, but neither was strong enough to influence his fearful temper; he was unconscious of the coming and fatal blow. The Prince de Conde, who saw the evil to its full extent, was too courageous by nature to fear the consequences; he was inclined to do good, but would do it only in his own way. His age, his humour, and his victories hindered him from associating patience with activity, nor was he acquainted, unfortunately, with this maxim so necessary for princes,—“always to sacrifice the little affairs to the greater;” and the Cardinal, being ignorant of our ways, daily confounded the most weighty with the most trifling.

The Parliament, who met on the 2d of January, 1649, resolved to enforce the execution of the declaration, which, they pretended, had been infringed in all its articles; and the Queen was resolved to retire from Paris with the King and the whole Court. The Queen was guided by the Cardinal, and the Duc d’Orleans by La Riviere, the most sordid and self-interested man of the age in which he lived. As for the Prince de Conde, he began to be disgusted with the unseasonable proceedings of the Parliament almost as soon as he had concerted measures with Broussel and Longueil, which distaste, joined to the kindly attentions of the Queen, the apparent submission of the Cardinal, and an hereditary inclination received from his parents to keep well with the Court, cramped the resolutions of his great soul. I bewailed this change in his behaviour both for my own and the public account, but much more for his sake. I loved him as much as I honoured him, and clearly saw the precipice.

I had divers conferences with him, in which I found that his disgust was turned into wrath and indignation. He swore there was no bearing with the insolence and impertinence of those citizens who struck at the royal authority; that as long as he thought they aimed only at Mazarin he was on their side; that I myself had often confessed that no certain measures could be concerted with men who changed their opinions every quarter of an hour; that he could never condescend to be General of an army of fools, with whom no wise man would entrust himself; besides that, he was a Prince of the blood, and would not be instrumental in giving a shock to the Throne; and that the Parliament might thank themselves if they were ruined through not observing the measures agreed on.

This was the substance of my answer: “No men are more bound by interest than the Parliament to maintain the royal authority, so that they cannot be thought to have a design to ruin the State, though their proceedings may have a tendency that way. It must be owned, therefore, that if the sovereign people do evil, it is only when they are not able to act as well as they would. A skilful minister, who knows how to manage large bodies of men as well as individuals, keeps up such a due balance between the Prince’s authority and the people’s obedience as to make all things succeed and prosper. But the present Prime Minister has neither judgment nor strength to adjust the pendulum of this State clock, the springs of which are out of order. His business is to make it go slower, which, I own, he attempts to do, but very awkwardly, because he has not the brains for it. In this lies the fault of our machine. Your Highness is in the right to set about the mending of it, because nobody else is capable of doing it; but in order to do this must you join with those that would knock it in pieces?

“You are convinced of the Cardinal’s extravagances, and that his only view is to establish in France a form of government known nowhere but in Italy. If he should succeed, will the State be a gainer by it, according to its only true maxims? Would it be an advantage to the Princes of the blood in any sense? But, besides, has he any likelihood of succeeding? Is he not loaded with the odium and contempt of the public? and is not the Parliament the idol they revere? I know you despise them because the Court is so well armed, but let me tell you that they are so confident of their power that they feel their importance. They are come to that pass that they do not value your forces, and though the evil is that at present their strength consists only in their imagination, yet a time may come when they may be able to do whatever they now think it in their power to do.

“Your Highness lately told me that this disposition of the people was only smoke; but be assured that smoke so dark and thick proceeds from a brisk fire, which the Parliament blows, and, though they mean well, may blaze up into such a flame as may consume themselves and again hazard the destruction of the State, which has been the case more than once. Bodies of men, when once exasperated by a Ministry, always aggravate their failures, and scarcely ever show them any favour, which, in some cases, is enough to ruin a kingdom.

“If, when the proposition was formerly made to the Parliament by the Cardinal to declare whether they intended to set bounds to the royal authority, if, I say, they had not wisely eluded the ridiculous and dangerous question, France would have run a great risk, in my opinion, of being entirely ruined; for had they answered in the affirmative, as they were on the point of doing, they would have rent the veil that covers the mysteries of State. Every monarchy has its peculiar veil; that of France consists in a kind of religious and sacred silence, which, by the subjects generally paying a blind obedience to their Kings, muffles up that right which they think they have to dispense with their obedience in cases where a complaisance to their Kings would be a prejudice to themselves. It is a wonder that the Parliament did not strip off this veil by a formal decree. This has had much worse consequences since the people have taken the liberty to look through it.

“Your Highness cannot by the force of arms prevent these dangerous consequences, which, perhaps, are already too near at hand. You see that even the Parliament can hardly restrain the people whom they have roused; that the contagion is spread into the provinces, and you know that Guienne and Provence are entirely governed by the example of Paris. Every thing shakes and totters, and it is your Highness only that can set us right, because of the splendour of your birth and reputation, and the generally received opinion that none but you can do it.