It was especially after Henri IV.’s death that the tendencies of the young king revealed themselves. He loved his father tenderly, a great deal more than Marie de Medicis did, who, moreover, never showed much affection for her elder son. He worthily wept his violent death,[59] and long afterwards, hearing at the Louvre, one of the late King’s songs, he went aside to sob.[60] But if, while yet a child, he had appreciated the glory of Henri IV., if he had shared his patriotic sentiments, if he was proud of his victories, he had silently blamed the licence which, in acts, and still more in language, then rendered the French Court one of the most gross in Europe. As King, he would not tolerate these excesses. He showed himself openly austere in his speech, and modest in his actions, forbade in his presence obscene songs and scandalous conversations, and in order to avoid any pretext for them, replied sharply to M. de Souvré, his governor, when he wished to talk with him about marriage: “Do not let us speak of that, sir; do not let us speak of that.”
It was nevertheless necessary to speak of it, and to set out for Bordeaux. Louis XIII., then in his fifteenth year, still possessed, and was to preserve for a long time, the tastes and predilections of his infancy. He gave himself up to them in order to divert his mind from the marriage festivities. He kept birds, armed his gentlemen, and enrolled them in a vigilant and disciplined troop; then he assisted at the Council, replied pertinently to the deputations presented to him, and thus mingled the simple amusements of the child with the grave accomplishment of his business as King.[61] Much less desirous of fulfilling his duties as husband, he nevertheless affected towards the Infanta, either from self-esteem, or from a sense of propriety towards the strangers who were bringing her to him, an attention which surprised and charmed the court. He went to meet the train which accompanied her, showed himself curious and pleased to see her, and was timid, but attentive and courteous, in the first interviews which he had with her.[62] This was all; and, if for an instant, he possessed the manners of a gallant and attentive cavalier, he by no means exhibited the behaviour of a lover. During the evening after the celebration of the ceremony, he remained insensible to the encouragements of M. de Grammont,[63] and Marie de Medicis had to exert her authority in order to induce him to go to Anne of Austria. Four years afterwards the marriage was not yet consummated; and this event, ardently desired by the Court of France, disconsolate at the King’s coldness; by the Court of Spain, which saw an insult in this disdain; by the Pope’s nuncio, and by the Court of Tuscany, which had so much contributed towards the union, became in some degree an affair of State.
Many efforts, many attempts were necessary to induce Louis XIII. to change his course of behaviour, of which the remote cause may be ascribed to his early impressions as Dauphin, and of which a more immediate one has been discovered by the Nuncio Bentivoglio.[64] Sometimes the King’s pride was attempted to be touched, and the politic Nuncio, availing himself of the marriage of the Princess Christine with the Duke of Savoy, asked Louis XIII., “If he wished to have the shame of seeing his sister have a son before he had a Dauphin.”[65] Sometimes recourse was had to influences still more direct.[66] At length, January 25, 1619, Albert de Luynes, after vainly begging him to cede to the wishes of his subjects, carried him by force into the Queen’s chamber.[67] The following day, all the ambassadors announced this event to their respective governments.
From that time, Louis XIII. was less scared, but almost as timid[68] as ever, and though, preserving all his repugnances, he sometimes overcame them as a matter of duty, and showed himself a tolerably ardent, but never very tender husband. In the month of December, 1619, there were reasons for hoping that the Queen was pregnant.[69] This hope, which soon vanished, was renewed at the commencement of 1622, but was again destroyed by a fall, which Anne of Austria had while playing with the Duchess de Chevreuse.[70] Buckingham’s rapid visit to France, if it left a profound remembrance in the Queen’s heart, certainly had no influence upon the King’s conduct. Nothing was changed in the intercourse of the two spouses, which was neither more frequent, nor ever entirely interrupted.[71] After, as before this visit, Louis XIII. almost invariably saw in the Queen the Spaniard in blood and affection; and when in May, 1621, he had to announce to her the death of her father, he did it in this wise: “Madam,” said he, “I have just now received letters from Spain, in which they write me word for certain, that the King your father is dead.” Then, mounting his horse, he set out for the chase.[72] It is undoubtedly true, moreover, that Anne of Austria, who was, to her eternal glory, to become thoroughly French on assuming the Regency, and perceiving the true interests of her young son, to serve them with patriotism, intelligence, and firmness, even in opposition to her old friends, was, during the life-time of Louis XIII., the natural centre of a secret but constant and implacable opposition to the system which Richelieu supported. Good, but proud, she had been galled by her husband’s indifference, humiliated by Richelieu’s chicanery and mistrust, and irritated at not possessing any influence, so that, in the midst of the war which divided Spain and France, she had not wished to dissimulate the attachment which she preserved for her own family and for her country. Badly advised by the frivolous and restless Duchess de Chevreuse, she had engaged in different enterprises by which, without betraying France, she had furnished her enemies with arms sufficiently powerful for them to be able to maintain her in disgrace with Louis XIII.
This Prince, who during his whole life longed for the moment when he should quit his state of tutelage,[73] and who, from being under the control of his governor, was to pass under his mother’s, then under Albert de Luynes’, and lastly, under Richelieu’s, joined to rather a fierce pride a true and just sense and exact knowledge of his inferiority. He detested the yoke, but he felt that it was necessary. Destined by his own incapacity to be for ever accomplishing the designs of others, he submitted to constraint, although constantly disposed to revolt. But he loved neither his mother, whom he discarded, nor De Luynes, whose death he did not regret. Richelieu alone, not only by the vast superiority of his genius, but especially by the obsequiousness of his language, by incessant precautions, by continually new artifices of humility, succeeded in seducing that unquiet and distrustful spirit, over which flattery had no power.[74] He ended by even attaching the King to himself, whatever may have been said about it, and by inspiring in him an affection which was bestowed quite as much upon the man as upon the indispensable Minister. Louis XIII. had the greatest solicitude for Richelieu, and paid him the most delicate attentions; and it can be affirmed, after a perusal of his letters, as yet unpublished, that these marks of lively friendship were not merely the result of self-interest.[75] Moreover, even when he was in possession of supreme authority, Richelieu, ever on the alert, showed himself to the last as studious in preserving it as he had been ingenious and supple in acquiring it. His efforts were constantly exerted to neutralize the influence of a Spanish Queen over a King whom he wished to maintain in the glorious policy of Henri IV. But he did not content himself with depriving the legitimate wife of his King of the whole of her power, which was a matter of no difficulty. Although incapable of criminal desires, since he could abstain from lawful pleasures, Louis XIII., sickly and morose as he was, reaping from love only jealousy and trouble, devoured by inquietudes and cares, had need of pouring out his complaints, of exposing his griefs, of unbosoming himself to a friendly heart, away from the pomp and noise which he fled. Richelieu always directed this inclination; and if he subjugated the King’s mind by the force of his own genius, if he fascinated him by the seductive power of his words, he watched over all his actions by means of spies, with whom he surrounded him, and governed even his soul through his confessors.[76] When the Prince’s affections, “purely spiritual, and enjoyments always chaste,” as says a contemporary, were bestowed on instruments, indocile to the directions of the ruling Minister, the latter knew how to conjure up scruples in the King’s mind, even for these pure connections, and which triumphed over his inclinations. To Madame de Hautefort succeeded, in the royal affections, Mademoiselle de la Fayette, to her Cinq-Mars, and these three individuals, whose relations with the King always continued perfectly irreproachable, but who rebelled against Richelieu’s imperious will, expiated their resistance—one in exile, another in a convent, and the third on the scaffold.
If, then, it was true that Anne of Austria had, in 1630, committed adultery in order to give an heir to her dying husband, how are we to admit that a Minister so suspicious and vigilant would not have been cognisant of it, and knowing it, would not, by informing the convalescent King of this crime, have brought about the ruin of a Queen whom he detested, and who, in union with Marie de Medicis, was then plotting his downfall? It is in vain to object that a feeling of propriety would have restrained the Cardinal:[77] he was incapable of any such sentiment. Inflexible towards his enemies, because he regarded them, with reason, as the enemies of the State, to unmask and ruin them he employed a stubbornness and a persistence which nothing could overcome. When it was necessary to persuade Louis XIII. of the communication which the Queen kept up with Spain, the implacable Minister could make the most minute search and put the most humiliating questions. He could cause her dearest servants to be arrested; he could confront her with spies; he could treat her as an obscure criminal; and the admirable devotion of Madame de Hautefort[78] could alone enable the Queen, very strongly suspected, but not entirely convicted, to escape from this grave danger. And yet people desire to maintain that Richelieu would have left Louis XIII. ignorant of a much greater crime, and one which touched more immediately the King’s honour! Moreover, where, when, how, and in what interest would this crime have been committed? To conjectures and vague insinuations let us oppose positive facts, which prove that Richelieu did not acquaint Louis XIII., because Anne of Austria had never ceased to be innocent.
The King fell ill at Lyons, not during the early part of August, as has been said, but on September 22, and here especially dates are of the utmost importance.[79] He was seized with a fever, which consumed him. The seventh day—the 29th—it was complicated by a dysentery, which exhausted him. The attack of this last complaint, produced by one of those medicines then much in vogue, was so violent, and its consequences so rapid, that by midnight the doctors despaired of saving him. Marie de Medicis had retired. Anne of Austria, who did not leave the royal patient, resolved to have him warned by his confessor of the danger he was in. But, at the first cautiously spoken words, Louis XIII. conjured Father Suffren, and those who surrounded him, not to hide the truth from him. He learned it with calmness and courage, confessed, communicated, and asked pardon of all for any wrong he might have done them; then, calling the Queen, he embraced her tenderly, and addressed to her a touching farewell. As she retired on one side in order to weep freely, the King prayed Father Suffren to go and find her, and again beg her from him “to pardon him all the unpleasantnesses he might have caused her the whole time of their married life.” He afterwards conversed with Richelieu, and offered a spectacle of the most edifying resignation. Towards the middle of the day, the Archbishop of Lyons was preparing himself to bring in the extreme unction, when the doctors, who had already bled this exhausted body six times in succession, ordered a seventh bleeding.[80] But then the true cause of the illness, which was unknown to them, was made clear; an internal abscess broke, and nature saved the patient at the moment when the intervention of his physicians promised to be fatal.[81] Louis XIII., soon re-established in health, left Lyons with the Queen, who did not cease to lavish on him the most tender cares, and whose sincere grief had touched him. In this crisis the two spouses had forgotten the past.[82] The repugnance and the coldness of the one, the wounded pride of the other, had disappeared, and they were naturally led to appreciate whatever goodness and amiability were to be found in each other’s natures.[83]
Strong in the unaccustomed sway which she exercised, but exaggerating its extent, Anne of Austria was not content with holding in the King’s heart the place which properly belonged to her. Aided by the ambitious and vindictive Marie de Medicis, after having occupied herself with her griefs as a wife, she desired to extend her censure to affairs of State, and to attack, in Richelieu, not only one who had kept alive the mistrust of herself, who had called suspicion into existence, and had separated King and Queen, mother and son, but also the stubborn pursuer of the great policy of Henri IV., who maintained abroad the pre-eminence of France over Spain, and the abasement of the House of Austria. We know how Louis XIII., who was incapable of vast projects, but who understood their value, was recalled by reasons of State to Richelieu, and, on a famous day, confirmed his authority at the very instant that it seemed annihilated.[84]
To what period are we to assign the commission of the fault resulting in Anne’s pregnancy of January, 1631? It cannot have been on September 30, 1630, when Louis XIII.’s life was in danger, for the Queen was delivered during the first five days of April, 1631.[85] Was it on the arrival of Louis XIII. at Lyons, at the commencement of August, 1630? But Anne of Austria did not then have the same interest in being a mother, which, according to her accusers, she would have on September 30, when the King was dying. Either the child was still-born, or else its conception dates from a period when Louis XIII. was its father. The origin of this pregnancy is suspected because Richelieu, in a journal attributed to him, and of which it has been said “that it lent to Voltaire’s supposition rather a serious ground of argument,”[86] was pleased to note the progress of the Queen’s condition, often sent to inquire after her health, carried off her apothecary, then returned him to her, forbade the Spanish ambassador to make too frequent visits to the Louvre, and, in a word, exercised over Anne of Austria a suspicious and unceasing vigilance. But if we admit the authenticity of this journal, which, probable enough in certain details, is much less so when taken as a whole, all the facts which it relates, the espionage which it chronicles, the suspicions which it insinuates, concern the Spaniard, irritated at Richelieu’s unexpected triumph and dreaming of overthrowing him, not the guilty spouse whose crime it is desired to prove. Accepting this last theory, why should Richelieu have restored to the Queen the medical attendant who could have aided her in concealing the consequences of her fault? Why was she not entirely separated from all her confidants? Why were not the visits of the Spanish ambassador altogether forbidden? Richelieu, it is true, caused the Countess de Fargis to be dismissed. But it was only because she had advised the Queen to espouse her brother-in-law, Gaston d’Orléans, if she became a widow, because she had inflamed Anne of Austria’s resentment, and because she was the soul of the opposition, of the political intrigues, and of the secret plots against the Cardinal. If everything in her long correspondence seized by the latter, and existing in the archives,[87] justifies him for having exiled the dangerous Countess, if we find in it traces of the hopes of the two Queens, of the affections which bind them to Spain, of the successes they desire, of the reverses they hope for, nothing can be discovered that sullies Anne of Austria’s honour. The Countess de Fargis appears in it as the active instigator of cabals, but not as the complacent accomplice and the confidant of a crime.
The truth is that enceinte for the third time, and fearing a third accident, Anne of Austria did not wish the news of her condition to be spread abroad, or to arouse in the minds of the people a hope which the remembrance of the past rendered very uncertain of fulfilment. That this pregnancy was due to the reconciliation arising from the King’s illness, Richelieu himself attests, not as the doubtful author of a journal which, however, does not contain a single line really accusing the Queen, but as the indisputable writer of those innumerable letters, papers, and authentic documents, which have passed from the hands of the Duchess d’Aiguillon, his niece, into the archives of the State.[88] “It is suspected, not without good reason, that the Queen is enceinte,” he writes. “If this happiness befalls France, it ought to receive it as a fruit of the blessing of God and of the good understanding which has existed between the King and the Queen, his wife, for some time past.”[89] The same care which Anne of Austria took to conceal a third miscarriage, she had already shown with regard to a second, which occurred March 16, 1622, and at that time “they had hidden from the King as long as possible the destruction of his hopes.”[90] But from the first day that Richelieu entered upon power, nothing escaped the penetrating regard of the attentive Minister. He watched, he observed, he knew everything. Every member of the royal family was surrounded by some of his agents. If from this incessant surveillance, and from the written evidence in which it stands revealed, springs the proof that the Queen had coquetted with Buckingham, been swayed by the counsels of the Duchess de Chevreuse,[91] and faithful to the last recommendations of her father, Philip III., had been always ready to support the Spanish interest near the King; if, in a word, Richelieu represents her as a Queen but little French, he never insinuates that she has been a guilty spouse; and history can scarcely hope to be better informed, and certainly ought not to show itself more rigorous than the clear-sighted and pitiless Minister.