Richelieu was the heir of the designs of Henry IV, and the ancestor of those of Louis XIV. But they courted, and were sustained by, the applause and the attachment of their subjects. He passed his life in one unintermitted struggle with each, in turn, of the powerful bodies over which he ruled. By a long series of well-directed blows, he crushed forever the political and military strength of the Huguenots. By his strong hand, the sovereign courts were confined to their judicial duties, and their claims to participate in the government of the state were scattered to the winds. Trampling under foot all rules of judicial procedure and the clearest principles of justice, he brought to the scaffold one after another of the proudest nobles of France, by sentences dictated by himself to extraordinary judges of his own selection; thus teaching the doctrine of social equality by lessons too impressive to be misinterpreted or forgotten by any later generation. Both the privileges, in exchange for which the greater fiefs had surrendered their independence, and the franchises, for the conquest of which the cities, in earlier times, had successfully contended, were alike swept away by this remorseless innovator. He exiled the mother, oppressed the wife, degraded the brother, banished the confessor, and put to death the kinsmen and favorites of the king, and compelled the king himself to be the instrument of these domestic severities. Though surrounded by enemies and by rivals, his power ended only with his life. Though beset by assassins, he died in the ordinary course of nature. Though he had waded to dominion through slaughter, cruelty, and wrong, he passed to his great account amid the applause of the people, with the benedictions of the Church; and, as far as any human being ever could perceive, in hope, in tranquility, and in peace.
What, then, is the reason why so tumultuous a career reached at length so serene a close? The reason is that, amid all his conflicts, Richelieu wisely and successfully maintained three powerful alliances. He cultivated the attachment of men of letters, the favor of the commons, and the sympathy of all French idolaters of the national glory.
He was a man of extensive, if not of profound, learning, a theologian of some account, and an aspirant for fame as a dramatist, a wit, a poet, and a historian. But if his claims to admiration as a writer were disputable, none contended his title to applause as a patron of literature and of art. The founder of a despotism in the world of politics, he aspired also to be the founder of a commonwealth in the world of letters. While crushing the national liberties, he founded the French Academy as the sacred shrine of intellectual freedom and independence. Acknowledging no equal in the state, he forbade the acknowledgment, in that literary republic, of any superiority save that of genius. While refusing to bare his head to any earthly potentate, he would permit no eminent author to stand bareheaded in his presence. By these cheap and not dishonest arts, he gained an inestimable advantage. The honors he conferred on the men of learning of his age they largely repaid, by placing under his control the main-springs of public opinion.
To conciliate the commons of France, Richelieu even ostentatiously divested himself of every prejudice hostile to his popularity. A prince of the Church of Rome, he cherished the independence of the Gallican Church and clergy. The conqueror of the Calvinists, he yet respected the rights of conscience. Of noble birth and ancestry, his demeanor was still that of a tribune of the people. But it was not by demeanor alone that he labored to win their regard. He affected the more solid praise of large and salutary reformations.
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, KING OF SWEDEN.
By FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER.
[Known as the Protector of the Protestant Faith, the most brilliant hero of the Thirty Years’ War, and one of the greatest soldiers of modern times, born 1594, killed at the battle of Lutzen, 1632. In 1630, the Swedish king having satisfactorily disposed of the various national difficulties which had so far embarrassed his career, threw the weight of his gantlet into the struggle going on between the Catholic league, headed by Ferdinand of Austria, and the Protestant princes of Germany. The great genius of Gustavus Adolphus, who taught an entirely new system of tactics, made him irresistible, and in two years he firmly established a Protestant ascendancy in German affairs which no power afterward could break. Wallenstein was his most brilliant antagonist. After the death of the Swedish hero, the generals who had been trained in his school continued the war with various vicissitudes till peace was declared, substantially granting the rights for which the Protestant chieftains had been fighting.]
Gustavus Adolphus had not completed his seventeenth year when the Swedish throne became vacant by the death of his father; but the early maturity of his genius enabled the Estates to abridge in his favor the legal period of minority. With a glorious conquest over himself, he commenced a reign which was to have victory for its constant attendant—a career which was to begin and end in success. The young Countess of Brahe, the daughter of a subject, had gained his early affections, and he had resolved to share with her the Swedish throne; but, constrained by time and circumstances, he made his attachment yield to the higher duties of a king, and heroism again took exclusive possession of a heart which was not destined by nature to confine itself within the limits of quiet domestic happiness.
Christian IV of Denmark, who ascended the throne before the birth of Gustavus, in an inroad upon Sweden, had gained some considerable advantages over the father of that hero. Gustavus Adolphus hastened to put an end to this destructive war, and, by prudent sacrifices, obtained a peace in order to turn his arms against the czar of Muscovy. The questionable fame of a conqueror never tempted him to spend the blood of his subjects in unjust wars; but he never shrunk from a just one. His arms were successful against Russia, and Sweden was augmented by several important provinces on the east.
In the meantime, Sigismund of Poland retained against the son the same sentiments of hostility which the father had provoked, and left no artifice untried to shake the allegiance of his subjects, to cool the ardor of his friends, and to embitter his enemies. Neither the great qualities of his rival, nor the repeated proofs of devotion which Sweden gave to her loved monarch, could extinguish in this infatuated prince the foolish hope of regaining his lost throne. All Gustavus’s overtures were haughtily rejected. Unwillingly was this really peaceful king involved in a tedious war with Poland, in which the whole of Livonia and Polish Prussia were successively conquered. Though constantly victorious, Gustavus Adolphus was always the first to hold out the hand of peace.
After the unsuccessful attempt of the king of Denmark to check the emperor’s[26] progress, Gustavus Adolphus was the only prince in Europe to whom oppressed liberty could look for protection—the only one who, while he was personally qualified to conduct such an enterprise, had both political motives to recommend and wrongs to justify it. Before the commencement of the war in Lower Saxony, important political interests induced him, as well as the king of Denmark, to offer his services and his army for the defense of Germany; but the offer of the latter had, to his own misfortune, been preferred. Since that time Wallenstein and the emperor had adopted measures which must have been equally offensive to him as a man and as a king. Imperial troops had been dispatched to the aid of the Polish king, Sigismund, to defend Prussia against the Swedes. When the king complained to Wallenstein of this act of hostility, he received for answer, “The emperor has more soldiers than he wants for himself; he must help his friends.” The Swedish ambassadors had been insolently ordered by Wallenstein to withdraw from the conference at Lubeck; and when, unawed by this command, they were courageous enough to remain, contrary to the law of nations, he had threatened them with violence.