The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 55, May, 1862

Hence follows the fine result, that in life to hold your own is to make advance. Destiny comes to us, like the children in their play, saying, "Hold fast all I give you"; and while we nobly detain it, the penny changes between our palms to the wealth of cities and kingdoms. The barge of blessing, freighted for us by unspeakable hands, comes floating down from the head-waters of that stream whereon we also are afloat; and to meet it we have only to wait for it, not ourselves ebbing away, but loyally stemming the tide. It may be, as Mr. Carlyle alleges, that the Constitution of the United States is no supreme effort of genius; but events now passing are teaching us that every day of fidelity to the spirit of it lends it new preciousness; and that an adherence to it, not petty and literal, but at once large and indomitable, might almost make it a charter of new sanctities both of law and liberty for the human race.

THE STATESMANSHIP OF RICHELIEU

Thus far, the struggles of the world have developed its statesmanship after three leading types.

First of these is that based on faith in some great militant principle. Strong among statesmen of this type, in this time, stand Cavour, with his faith in constitutional liberty,—Cobden, with his faith in freedom of trade,—the third Napoleon, with his faith that the world moves, and that a successful policy must keep the world's pace.

The second style of statesmanship is seen in the reorganization of old States to fit new times. In this the chiefs are such men as Cranmer and Turgot.

But there is a third class of statesmen sometimes doing more brilliant work than either of the others. These are they who serve a State in times of dire chaos,—in times when a nation is by no means ripe for revolution, but only stung by desperate revolt: these are they who are quick enough and firm enough to bind all the good forces of the State into one cosmic force, therewith to compress or crush all chaotic forces: these are they who throttle treason and stab rebellion,—who fear not, when defeat must send down misery through ages, to insure victory by using weapons of the hottest and sharpest. Theirs, then, is a statesmanship which it may be well for the leading men of this land and time to be looking at and thinking of, and its representative man shall be Richelieu.

Never, perhaps, did a nation plunge more suddenly from the height of prosperity into the depth of misery than did France on that fourteenth of May, 1610, when Henry IV. fell dead by the dagger of Ravaillac. All earnest men, in a moment, saw the abyss yawning,—felt the State sinking,—felt themselves sinking with it. And they did what, in such a time, men always do: first all shrieked, then every man clutched at the means of safety nearest him. Sully rode through the streets of Paris with big tears streaming down his face,—strong men whose hearts had been toughened and crusted in the dreadful religious wars sobbed like children,—all the populace swarmed abroad bewildered,—many swooned,—some went mad. This was the first phase of feeling.

Then came a second phase yet more terrible. For now burst forth that old whirlwind of anarchy and bigotry and selfishness and terror which Henry had curbed during twenty years. All earnest men felt bound to protect themselves, and seized the nearest means of defence. Sully shut himself up in the Bastille, and sent orders to his son-in-law, the Duke of Rohan, to bring in six thousand soldiers to protect the Protestants. All un-earnest men, especially the great nobles, rushed to the Court, determined, now that the only guardians of the State were a weak-minded woman and a weak-bodied child, to dip deep into the treasury which Henry had filled to develop the nation, and to wrench away the power which he had built to guard the nation.

In order to make ready for this grasp at the State treasure and power by the nobles, the Duke of Epernon, from the corpse of the King, by whose side he was sitting when Ravaillac struck him, strides into the Parliament of Paris, and orders it to declare the late Queen, Mary of Medici, Regent; and when this Parisian court, knowing full well that it had no right to confer the regency, hesitated, he laid his hand on his sword, and declared, that, unless they did his bidding at once, his sword should be drawn from its scabbard. This threat did its work. Within three hours after the King's death, the Paris Parliament, which had no right to give it, bestowed the regency on a woman who had no capacity to take it.

At first things seemed to brighten a little. The Queen-Regent sent such urgent messages to Sully that he left his stronghold of the Bastille and went to the palace. She declared to him, before the assembled Court, that he must govern France still. With tears she gave the young King into his arms, telling Louis that Sully was his father's best friend, and bidding him pray the old statesman to serve the State yet longer.

But soon this good scene changed. Mary had a foster-sister, Leonora Galligai, and Leonora was married to an Italian adventurer, Concini. These seemed a poor couple, worthless and shiftless, their only stock in trade Leonora's Italian cunning; but this stock soon came to be of vast account, for thereby she soon managed to bind and rule the Queen-Regent,—managed to drive Sully into retirement in less than a year,—managed to make herself and her husband the great dispensers at Court of place and pelf. Penniless though Concini had been, he was in a few months able to buy the Marquisate of Ancre, which cost him nearly half a million livres,—and, soon after, the post of First Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and that cost him nearly a quarter of a million,—and, soon after that, a multitude of broad estates and high offices at immense prices. Leonora, also, was not idle, and among her many gains was a bribe of three hundred thousand livres to screen certain financiers under trial for fraud.

Next came the turn of the great nobles. For ages the nobility of France had been the worst among her many afflictions. From age to age attempts had been made to curb them. In the fifteenth century Charles VII. had done much to undermine their power, and Louis XI. had done much to crush it. But strong as was the policy of Charles, and cunning as was the policy of Louis, they had made one omission, and that omission left France, though advanced, miserable. For these monarchs had not cut the root of the evil. The French nobility continued practically a serf-holding nobility.

Despite, then, the curb put upon many old pretensions of the nobles, the serf-owning spirit continued to spread a net-work of curses over every arm of the French government, over every acre of the French soil, and, worst of all, over the hearts and minds of the French people. Enterprise was deadened; invention crippled. Honesty was nothing; honor everything. Life was of little value. Labor was the badge of servility; laziness the very badge and passport of gentility. The serf-owning spirit was an iron wall between noble and not-noble,—the only unyielding wall between France and prosperous peace.

But the serf-owning spirit begat another evil far more terrible: it begat a substitute for patriotism,—a substitute which crushed out patriotism just at the very emergencies when patriotism was most needed. For the first question which in any State emergency sprang into the mind of a French noble was not,—How does this affect the welfare of the nation? but,—How does this affect the position of my order? The serf-owning spirit developed in the French aristocracy an instinct which led them in national troubles to guard the serf-owning class first and the nation afterward, and to acknowledge fealty to the serf-owning interest first and to the national interest afterward.

So it proved in that emergency at the death of Henry. Instead of planting themselves as a firm bulwark between the State and harm, the Duke of Épernon, the Prince of Condé, the Count of Soissons, the Duke of Guise, the Duke of Bouillon, and many others, wheedled or threatened the Queen into granting pensions of such immense amount that the great treasury filled by Henry and Sully with such noble sacrifices, and to such noble ends, was soon nearly empty.

But as soon as the treasury began to run low the nobles began a worse work, Mary had thought to buy their loyalty; but when they had gained such treasures, their ideas mounted higher. A saying of one among them became their formula, and became noted:—"The day of Kings is past; now is come the day of the Grandees."

Every great noble now tried to grasp some strong fortress or rich city. One fact will show the spirit of many. The Duke of Épernon had served Henry as Governor of Metz, and Metz was the most important fortified town in France; therefore Henry, while allowing D'Épernon the honor of the Governorship, had always kept a Royal Lieutenant in the citadel, who corresponded directly with the Ministry. But, on the very day of the King's death, D'Épernon despatched commands to his own creatures at Metz to seize the citadel, and to hold it for him against all other orders.

But at last even Mary had to refuse to lavish more of the national treasure and to shred more of the national territory among these magnates. Then came their rebellion.

Immediately Condé and several great nobles issued a proclamation denouncing the tyranny and extravagance of the Court,—calling on the Catholics to rise against the Regent in behalf of their religion,—calling on the Protestants to rise in behalf of theirs,—summoning the whole people to rise against the waste of their State treasure.

It was all a glorious joke. To call on the Protestants was wondrous impudence, for Condé had left their faith, and had persecuted them; to call on the Catholics was not less impudent, for he had betrayed their cause scores of times; but to call on the whole people to rise in defence of their treasury was impudence sublime, for no man had besieged the treasury more persistently, no man had dipped into it more deeply, than Condé himself.

The people saw this and would not stir. Condé could rally only a few great nobles and their retainers, and therefore, as a last tremendous blow at the Court, he and his followers raised the cry that the Regent must convoke the States-General.

Any who have read much in the history of France, and especially in the history of the French Revolution, know, in part, how terrible this cry was. By the Court, and by the great privileged classes of France, this great assembly of the three estates of the realm was looked upon as the last resort amid direst calamities. For at its summons came stalking forth from the foul past the long train of Titanic abuses and Satanic wrongs; then came surging up from the seething present the great hoarse cry of the people; then loomed up, dim in the distance, vast shadowy ideas of new truth and new right; and at the bare hint of these, all that was proud in France trembled.

This cry for the States-General, then, brought the Regent to terms at once, and, instead of acting vigorously, she betook herself to her old vicious fashion of compromising,—buying off the rebels at prices more enormous than ever. By her treaty of Sainte-Ménehould, Condé received half a million of livres, and his followers received payments proportionate to the evil they had done.

But this compromise succeeded no better than previous compromises. Even if the nobles had wished to remain quiet, they could not. Their lordship over a servile class made them independent of all ordinary labor and of all care arising from labor; some exercise of mind and body they must have; Condé soon took this needed exercise by attempting to seize the city of Poitiers, and, when the burgesses were too strong for him, by ravaging the neighboring country. The other nobles broke the compromise in ways wonderfully numerous and ingenious. France was again filled with misery.

Dull as Regent Mary was, she now saw that she must call that dreaded States-General, or lose not only the nobles, but the people: undecided as she was, she soon saw that she must do it at once,—that, if she delayed it, her great nobles would raise the cry for it, again and again, just as often as they wished to extort office or money. Accordingly, on the fourteenth of October, 1614, she summoned the deputies of the three estates to Paris, and then the storm set in.

Each of the three orders presented its "portfolio of grievances" and its programme of reforms. It might seem, to one who has not noted closely the spirit which serf-mastering thrusts into a man, that the nobles would appear in the States-General not to make complaints, but to answer complaints. So it was not. The noble order, with due form, entered complaint that theirs was the injured order. They asked relief from familiarities and assumptions of equality on the part of the people. Said the Baron de Sénecé, "It is a great piece of insolence to pretend to establish any sort of equality between the people and the nobility": other nobles declared, "There is between them and us as much difference as between master and lackey."

To match these complaints and theories, the nobles made demands,—demands that commoners should not be allowed to keep fire-arms,—nor to possess dogs, unless the dogs were hamstrung,—nor to clothe themselves like the nobles,—nor to clothe their wives like the wives of nobles,—nor to wear velvet or satin under a penalty of five thousand livres. And, preposterous as such claims may seem to us, they carried them into practice. A deputy of the Third Estate having been severely beaten by a noble, his demands for redress were treated as absurd. One of the orators of the lower order having spoken of the French as forming one great family in which the nobles were the elder brothers and the commoners the younger, the nobles made a formal complaint to the King, charging the Third Estate with insolence insufferable.

Next came the complaints and demands of the clergy. They insisted on the adoption in France of the Decrees of the Council of Trent, and the destruction of the liberties of the Gallican Church.

But far stronger than these came the voice of the people.

First spoke Montaigne, denouncing the grasping spirit of the nobles. Then spoke Savaron, stinging them with sarcasm, torturing them with rhetoric, crushing them with statements of facts.

But chief among the speakers was the President of the Third Estate, Robert Miron, Provost of the Merchants of Paris. His speech, though spoken across the great abyss of time and space and thought and custom which separates him from us, warms a true man's heart even now. With touching fidelity he pictured the sad life of the lower orders,—their thankless toil, their constant misery; then, with a sturdiness which awes us, he arraigned, first, royalty for its crushing taxation,—next, the whole upper class for its oppressions,—and then, daring death, he thus launched into popular thought an idea:—

"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 golden 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 are beyond slave-owners of these 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 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 Lucon, ARMAND JEAN DU PLESSIS DE RICHELIEU.

He spoke well. His thoughts were clear, his words pointed, his bearing firm. He had been bred a soldier, and so had strengthened his will; afterwards 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 at 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.

But, just at this moment, when a better day seemed to dawn, came an event which threw France back into anarchy, and Richelieu out into the world again.

The young King, Louis XIII., was now sixteen years old. His mother the Regent and her favorite Concini had carefully kept him down. Under their treatment he had grown morose and seemingly stupid; but he had wit enough to understand the policy of his mother and Concini, and strength enough to hate them for it.

The only human being to whom Louis showed any love was a young falconer, Albert de Luynes,—and with De Luynes he conspired against his mother's power and her favorite's life. On an April morning, 1617, the King and De Luynes sent a party of chosen men to seize Concini. They met him at the gate of the Louvre. As usual, he is bird-like in his utterance, snake-like in his bearing. They order him to surrender; he chirps forth his surprise,—and they blow out his brains. Louis, understanding the noise, puts on his sword, appears on the balcony of the palace, is saluted with hurrahs, and becomes master of his kingdom.

Straightway measures are taken against all supposed to be attached to the Regency. Concini's wife, the favorite Leonora, is burned as a witch,—Regent Mary is sent to Blois,—Richelieu is banished to his bishopric.

And now matters went from bad to worse. King Louis was no stronger than Regent Mary had been,—King's favorite Luynes was no better than Regent's favorite Concini had been. The nobles rebelled against the new rule, as they had rebelled against the old. The King went through the same old extortions and humiliations.

Then came also to full development yet another vast evil. As far back as the year after Henry's assassination, the Protestants, in terror of their enemies, now that Henry was gone and the Spaniards seemed to grow in favor, formed themselves into a great republican league,—a State within the State,—regularly organised in peace for political effort, and in war for military effort,—with a Protestant clerical caste which ruled always with pride, and often with menace.

Against such a theocratic republic war must come sooner or later, and in 1617 the struggle began. Army was pitted against army,—Protestant Duke of Rohan against Catholic Duke of Luynes. Meanwhile Austria and the foreign enemies of France, Condé and the domestic enemies of France, fished in the troubled waters, and made rich gains every day. So France plunged into sorrows ever deeper and blacker. But in 1624, Mary de Medici, having been reconciled to her son, urged him to recall Richelieu.

The dislike which Louis bore Richelieu was strong, but the dislike he bore toward compromises had become stronger. Into his poor brain, at last, began to gleam the truth, that a serf-mastering caste, after a compromise, only whines more steadily and snarls more loudly,—that, at last, compromising becomes worse than fighting. Richelieu was called and set at work.

Fortunately for our studies of the great statesman's policy, he left at his death a "Political Testament" which floods with light his steadiest aims and boldest acts. In that Testament he wrote this message:—

"When Your Majesty resolved to give me entrance into your councils and a great share of your confidence, I can declare with truth that the Huguenots divided the authority with Your Majesty, that the great nobles acted not at all as subjects, that the governors of provinces took on themselves the airs of sovereigns, and that the foreign alliances of France were despised. I promised Your Majesty to use all my industry, and all the authority you gave me, to ruin the Huguenot party, to abase the pride of the high nobles, and to raise your name among foreign nations to the place where it ought to be."

Such were the plans of Richelieu at the outset. Let us see how he wrought out their fulfilment.

First of all, he performed daring surgery and cautery about the very heart of the Court. In a short time he had cut out from that living centre of French power a number of unworthy ministers and favorites, and replaced them by men, on whom he could rely.