"He Effects of Richelieu's Policy. repulsed the English by driving them to the Isle of Ré, and by besieging La Rochelle; the Spaniards, by creating beside them the new kingdom of Portugal; and the imperialists, by detaching Bavaria from its alliance, by suspending their treaty with Denmark, and by sowing dissensions in the Catholic league. His measures were cruel, but not uncalled for. Chalais fell, but he had conspired with Lorraine and Spain; Montmorency fell, but he had entered France with arms in his hand; Cinq-Mars fell, but he had invited foreigners into the kingdom. Bred a simple priest, he became not only a great statesman, but a great general. And when La Rochelle fell before those measures to which Schomberg and Bassompierre were compelled to bow, he said to the king, 'Sire, I am no prophet, but I assure your majesty that if you will condescend to act as I advise you, you will pacificate Italy in the month of May, subjugate Languedoc in the month of July, and be on your return in the month of August.' And each of these prophecies he accomplished in its time and place, and in such wise that, from that moment, Louis XIII. vowed to follow forever the counsels of a man by which he had so well profited. Finally, he died, as Montesquieu asserts, after having made the monarch enact the secondary character in the monarchy, but the first in Europe; after having abased the king, but after having made his reign illustrious; and after having mowed down rebellion so close to the soil, that the descendants of those who had composed the league could only form the Fronde, as, after the reign of Napoleon, the successors of the La Vendée of '93 could only execute the Vendée of '32."
Louis XIII. did not long survive this greatest of ministers. Naturally weak, he was still weaker by disease. He was reduced to skin and bone. In this state, he called a council, nominated his queen, Anne of Austria, regent, during the minority of his son Louis XIV., then four years of age, and shortly after died, in 1643.
Mazarin, the new minister, followed out the Richelieu's Policy. policy of Richelieu. The war with Austria and Spain was continued, which was closed, on the Spanish side, by the victory of Rocroi, in 1643, obtained by the Prince of Condé, and in which battle twenty-three thousand Frenchmen completely routed twenty-six thousand Spaniards, killing eight thousand, and taking six thousand prisoners—one of the bloodiest battles ever fought. The great Condé here obtained those laurels which subsequent disgrace could never take away. The war on the side of Germany was closed, in 1648, by the peace of Westphalia. Turenne first appeared in the latter campaign of this long war, but gained no signal victory.
Cardinal Mazarin, a subtle and intriguing Italian, while he pursued the policy of Richelieu, had not his genius or success. He was soon involved in domestic troubles. The aristocracy rebelled. Had they been united, they would have succeeded; but their rivalries, jealousies, and squabbles divided their strength and distracted their councils. Their cause was lost, and Mazarin triumphed, more from their divisions than from his own strength.
He first had to oppose a clique of young nobles, full of arrogance and self-conceit, but scions of the greatest families. They hoped to recover the ancient ascendency of their houses. The chief of these were the Dukes of Beaufort, Épernon, and Guise. They made use, as their tool, of Madame Chevreuse, the confidential friend of the queen regent. And she demanded of the minister that posts of honor and power should be given to her friends, which would secure that independence which Richelieu had spent his life in restraining. Mazarin tried to amuse her, but, she being inexorable, he was obliged to break with her, and a conspiracy was the result, which, however, was easily suppressed.
But a more formidable enemy appeared in the person of Cardinal de Retz. De Retz, coadjutor archbishop of Paris, and afterwards cardinal, a man of boundless intrigue, unconquerable ambition, and restless discontent. To detail his plots and intrigues, would be to describe a labyrinth. He succeeded, however, in keeping the country in perpetual turmoil, now inflaming the minds of the people, then exciting insurrections among the nobles, and then, again, encouraging the parliaments in resistance. He never appeared as an actor, but every movement was directed by his genius. He did not escape suspicion, but committed no overt acts by which he could be punished. He and the celebrated Duchess de Longueville, a woman who had as great a talent for intrigue as himself, were the life and soul of the Fronde—a civil war which ended only in the reëstablishment of the monarchy on a firmer foundation. As the Fronde had been commenced by a troop of urchins, who, at the same time, amused themselves with slings, the wits of the court called the insurgents frondeurs, or slingers, insinuating that their force was trifling, and their aim mischief.
Nevertheless, the Frondeurs kept France in a state of anarchy for six years, and they were headed by some of the most powerful nobles, and even supported by the Parliament of Paris. The people, too, were on the side of the rebels, since they were ground down by taxation, and hoped to gain a relief from their troubles. But the rebels took the side of the oppressed only for their private advantage, and the parliament itself lacked the perseverance and intrepidity necessary to secure its liberty. The civil war of the Fronde, though headed by discontented nobles, and animated by the intrigues of a turbulent ecclesiastic, was really the contest between the parliament and the arbitrary power of the government. And the insurrection would have been fearful and successful, had the people been firm or the nobles faithful to the cause they defended. But the English Revolution, then in progress, and in which a king had been executed, shocked the lovers of constitutional liberty in France, and reacted then, even as the French Revolution afterwards reacted on the English mind. Moreover, the excesses which the people perpetrated at Paris, alarmed the parliament and the nobles who were allied with it, while it urged on the ministers to desperate courses. Prince of Condé. The prince of Condé, whose victories had given him an immortality, dallied with both parties, as his interests served. Allied with the court, he could overpower the insurgents; but allied with the insurgents, he could control the court. Sometimes he sided with the minister and sometimes with the insurgents, but in neither case unless he exercised a power and enjoyed a remuneration dangerous in any government. Both parties were jealous of him, both feared him, both hated him, both insulted him, and both courted him. At one time, he headed the royal troops to attack Paris, which was generally in the hands of the people and of parliament; and then, at another, he fought like a tiger to defend himself in Paris against the royal troops. He had no sympathy with either the parliament or the people, while he fought for them; and he venerated the throne, while he rebelled against it. His name was Louis de Bourbon, and he was a prince of the blood. He contended against the crown only to wrest from it the ancient power of the great nobles; and to gain this object, he thought to make the parliament and the Parisian mob his tools. The parliament, sincerely devoted to liberty, thought to make the nobles its tools, and only leagued with them to secure their services. The crafty Mazarin quietly beheld these dissensions, and was sure of ultimate success, even though at one time banished to Cologne. And, like a reed, he was ever ready to bend to difficulties he could not control. But he stooped to conquer. He at last got the Prince of Condé, his brother the Prince of Conti, and the Duke of Longueville, in his power. When the Duke of Orleans heard of it, he said, "He has taken a good haul in the net; he has taken a lion, a fox, and a monkey." But the princes escaped from the net, and, leagued with Turenne, Bouillon, La Rochefoucault, and other great nobles reached Paris, and were received with acclamations of joy by the misguided people. Then, again, they obtained the ascendant. But the ascendency was no sooner gained than the victors quarrelled with themselves, and with the parliament, for whose cause they professed to contend. It was in their power, when united, to have deprived the queen regent of her authority, and to have established constitutional liberty in France. But they would not unite. There was no spirit of disinterestedness, nor of patriotism, nor public virtue, without which liberty is impossible, even though there were forces enough to batter down Mount Atlas. Condé, the victor, suffered himself to be again bribed by the court. He would not persevere in his alliance with either nobles or the parliament. He did not unite with the nobles because he felt that he was a prince. He did not continue with the parliament, because he had no sympathy with freedom. The cause of the nobles was lost for want of mutual confidence; that of the parliament for lack of the spirit of perseverance. The parliament, at length, grew weary of war and of popular commotions, and submitted to the court. All parties hated and distrusted each other, more than they did the iron despotism of Mazarin. The power of insurgent nobles declined. De Retz, the arch intriguer, was driven from Paris. The Duchess de Longueville sought refuge in the vale of Port Royal; and, in the Jansenist doctrines, sought that happiness which earthly grandeur could not secure. Condé quitted Paris to join the Spanish armies. The rest of the rebellious nobles made humble submission. The people found they had nothing to gain from any dominant party, and resigned themselves to another long period of political and social slavery. The magistrates abandoned, in despair and disgust, their high claims to political rights, while the young king, on his bed of justice, decreed that parliament should no more presume to discuss or meddle with state affairs. The submissive parliament registered, without a murmur, the edict which gave a finishing stroke to its liberties. The Fronde war was a complete failure, because all parties usurped powers which did not belong to them, and were jealous of the rights of each other. The nobles wished to control the king, and the magistracy put itself forward to represent the commons, when the states general alone was the ancient and true representative of the nation, and the body to which it should have appealed. The Fronde rebellion was a failure, because it did not consult constitutional forms, because it formed unnatural alliances, and because it did not throw itself upon the force of immortal principles, but sought to support itself by mere physical strength rather than by moral power, which alone is the secret and the glory of all great internal changes.
The return of Power of Mazarin. Cardinal Mazarin to power, as the minister of Louis XIV., was the era of his grandeur. His first care was to restore the public finances; his second was to secure his personal aggrandizement. He obtained all the power which Richelieu had enjoyed, and reproved the king, and such a king as Louis XIV., as he would a schoolboy. He enriched and elevated his relatives, married them into the first families of France; and amassed a fortune of two hundred millions of livres, the largest perhaps that any subject has secured in modern times. He even aspired to the popedom; but this greatest of all human dignities, he was not permitted to obtain. A fatal malady seized him, and the physicians told him he had not two months to live. Some days after, he was seen in his dressing-gown, among his pictures, of which he was extravagantly fond, and exclaimed, "Must I quit all these? Look at that Correggio, this Venus of Titian, this incomparable deluge of Carracci. Farewell, dear pictures, that I have loved so dearly, and that have cost me so much."
The minister lingered awhile, and amused his last hours with cards. Death of Mazarin. He expired in 1661; and no minister after him was intrusted with such great power. He died unlamented, even by his sovereign, whose throne he had preserved, and whose fortune he had repaired. He had great talents of conversation, was witty, artful, and polite. He completed the work which Richelieu began; and, at his death, his master was the most absolute monarch that ever reigned in France.