"It is nothing less than a miracle that the people are able to answer so many demands. On the labor of their hands depends the maintenance of your majesty, of the clergy, of the nobility, of the commons. What without their exertions would be the value of the tithes and great possessions of the Church, of the splendid estates of the nobility, or of our own house-rents and inheritances? With their bones scarcely skinned over, your wretched people present themselves before you, beaten down and helpless, with the aspect rather of death itself than of living men, imploring your succor in the name of Him who has appointed you to reign over them—who made you a man, that you might be merciful to other men—and who made you the father of your subjects, that you might be compassionate to these your helpless children. If your majesty shall not take means for that end, I fear lest despair should teach the sufferers that a soldier is, after all, nothing more than a peasant bearing arms; and lest, when the vine-dresser shall have taken up his arquebuse, he should cease to become an anvil only that he may become a hammer."
After this the Third Estate demanded the convocation of a general assembly every ten years, a more just distribution of taxes, equality of all before the law, the suppression of interior custom-houses, the abolition of sundry sinecures held by nobles, the forbidding to leading nobles of unauthorized levies of soldiery, some stipulations regarding the working clergy and the non-residence of bishops; and in the midst of all these demands, as a gold grain amid husks, they placed a demand for the emancipation of the serfs.
But these demands were sneered at. The idea of the natural equality in rights of all men—the idea of the personal worth of every man—the idea that rough-clad workers have prerogatives which can be whipped out by no smooth-clad idlers—these ideas were as far beyond serf-owners of those days as they were beyond slave-owners of our own days. Nothing was done. Augustin Thierry is authority for the statement that the clergy were willing to yield something. The nobles would yield nothing. The different orders quarrelled until one March morning in 1615, when, on going to their hall, they were barred out and told that the workmen were fitting the place for a court ball. And so the deputies separated—to all appearance no new work was done, no new ideas enforced, no strong men set loose.
So it was in seeming; so it was not in reality. Something had been done. That assembly planted ideas in the French mind which struck more and more deeply, and spread more and more widely, until, after a century and a half, the Third Estate met again and refused to present petitions kneeling; and when King and nobles put on their hats, the commons put on theirs, and when that old brilliant stroke was again made, and the hall was closed and filled with busy carpenters and upholsterers, the deputies of the people swore that great tennis-court oath which blasted French tyranny.
But something great was done immediately. To that suffering nation a great man was revealed; for when the clergy pressed their requests they chose as their orator a young man only twenty-nine years of age, the Bishop of Luçon, Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu.
He spoke well. His thoughts were clear, his words well pointed, his bearing firm. He had been bred a soldier, and so had strengthened his will; afterward he had been made a scholar and so had strengthened his mind. He grappled with the problems given him in that stormy assembly with such force that he seemed about to do something; but just then came that day of the court ball, and Richelieu turned away like the rest.
But men had seen him and heard him. Forget him they could not. From that tremendous farce, then, France had gained directly one thing at least, and that was a sight of Richelieu.
The year, after the States-General, wore away in the old vile fashion. Condé revolted again, and this time he managed to scare the Protestants into revolt with him. The daring of the nobles was greater than ever. They even attacked the young King's train as he journeyed to Bordeaux, and another compromise had to be wearily built in the Treaty of Loudun. By this Condé was again bought off—but this time only by a bribe of a million and a half of livres. The other nobles were also paid enormously, and on making a reckoning it was found that this compromise had cost the King four millions and the country twenty millions. The nation had also to give into the hands of the nobles some of its richest cities and strongest fortresses.
Immediately after this compromise Condé returned to Paris, loud, strong, jubilant, defiant, bearing himself like a king. Soon he and his revolted again; but just at that moment Concini happened to remember Richelieu. The young bishop was called and set at work.
Richelieu grasped the rebellion at once. In broad daylight he seized Condé and shut him up in the Bastille; other noble leaders he declared guilty of treason and degraded them; he set forth the crimes and follies of the nobles in a manifesto which stung their cause to death in a moment; he published his policy in a proclamation which ran through France like fire, warming all hearts of patriots, withering all hearts of rebels; he sent out three great armies: one northward to grasp Picardy, one eastward to grasp Champagne, one southward to grasp Berri. There is a man who can do something! The nobles yield in a moment; they must yield.