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

Then he began his vast work. His policy embraced three great objects:

First, the overthrow of the Huguenot power; secondly, the subjugation of the great nobles; thirdly, the destruction of the undue might of Austria.

First, then, after some preliminary negotiations with foreign powers,—to be studied hereafter,—he attacked the great politico-religious party of the Huguenots.

These held, as their great centre and stronghold, the famous seaport of La Rochelle. He who but glances at the map shall see how strong was this position: he shall see two islands lying just off the west coast at that point, controlled by La Rochelle, yet affording to any foreign allies whom the Huguenots might admit there facilities for stinging France during centuries. The position of the Huguenots seemed impregnable. The city was well fortressed,—garrisoned by the bravest of men,—mistress of a noble harbor open at all times to supplies from foreign ports,—and in that harbor rode a fleet, belonging to the city, greater than the navy of France.

Richelieu saw well that here was the head of the rebellion. Here, then, he must strike it.

Strange as it may seem, his diplomacy was so skillful that he obtained ships to attack Protestants in La Rochelle from the two great Protestant powers,—England and Holland. With these he was successful. He attacked the city fleet, ruined it, and cleared the harbor.

But now came a terrible check. Richelieu had aroused the hate of that incarnation of all that was and Is offensive in English politics,—the Duke of Buckingham. Scandal-mongers were wont to say that both were in love with the Queen,—and that the Cardinal, though unsuccessful in his suit, outwitted the Duke and sent him out of the kingdom,—and that the Duke swore a great oath, that, if he could not enter France in one way, he would enter in another,—and that he brought about a war, and came himself as a commander: of this scandal believe what you will. But, be the causes what they may, the English policy changed, and Charles I. sent Buckingham with ninety ships to aid La Rochelle.

But Buckingham was flippant and careless; Richelieu, careful when there was need, and daring when there was need. Buckingham's heavy blows were foiled by Richelieu's keen thrusts, and then, in his confusion, Buckingham blundered so foolishly, and Richelieu profited by his blunders so shrewdly, that the fleet returned to England without any accomplishment of its purpose. The English were also driven from that vexing position in the Isle of Rhé.

Having thus sent the English home, for a time at least, he led king and nobles and armies to La Rochelle, and commenced the siege in full force. Difficulties met him at every turn; but the worst difficulty of all was that arising from the spirit of the nobility.

No one could charge the nobles of France with lack of bravery. The only charge was, that their bravery was almost sure to shun every useful form, and to take every noxious form. The bravery which finds outlet in duels they showed constantly; the bravery which finds outlet in street-fights they had shown from the days when the Duke of Orleans perished in a brawl to the days when the "Mignons" of Henry III. fought at sight every noble whose beard was not cut to suit them. The pride fostered by lording it over serfs, in the country, and by lording it over men who did not own serfs, in the capital, aroused bravery of this sort and plenty of it. But that bravery which serves a great, good cause, which must be backed by steadiness and watchfulness, was not so plentiful. So Richelieu found that the nobles who had conducted the siege before he took command had, through their brawling propensities and lazy propensities, allowed the besieged to garner in the crops from the surrounding country, and to master all the best points of attack.

But Richelieu pressed on. First he built an immense wall and earthwork, nine miles long, surrounding the city, and, to protect this, he raised eleven great forts and eighteen redoubts.

Still the harbor was open, and into this the English fleet might return and succor the city at any time. His plan was soon made. In the midst of that great harbor of La Rochelle he sank sixty hulks of vessels filled with stone; then, across the harbor,—nearly a mile wide, and, in places, more than eight hundred feet deep,—he began building over these sunken ships a great dike and wall,—thoroughly fortified, carefully engineered, faced with sloping layers of hewn stone. His own men scolded at the magnitude of the work,—the men in La Rochelle laughed at it. Worse than that, the Ocean sometimes laughed and scolded at it. Sometimes the waves sweeping in from that fierce Bay of Biscay destroyed in an hour the work of a week. The carelessness of a subordinate once destroyed in a moment the work of three months.

Yet it is but fair to admit that there was one storm which did not beat against Richelieu's dike. There set in against it no storm of hypocrisy from neighboring nations. Keen works for and against Richelieu were put forth in his day,—works calm and strong for and against him have been issuing from the presses of France and England and Germany ever since; but not one of the old school of keen writers or of the new school of calm writers is known to have ever hinted that this complete sealing of the only entrance to a leading European harbor was unjust to the world at large or unfair to the besieged themselves.

But all other obstacles Richelieu had to break through or cut through constantly. He was his own engineer, general, admiral, prime-minister. While he urged on the army to work upon the dike, he organized a French navy, and in due time brought it around to that coast and anchored it so as to guard the dike and to be guarded by it.

Yet, daring as all this work was, it was but the smallest part of his work. Richelieu found that his officers were cheating his soldiers in their pay and disheartening them; in face of the enemy he had to reorganize the army and to create a new military system. He made the army twice as effective and supported it at two-thirds less cost than before. It was his boast in his "Testament," that, from a mob, the army became "like a well-ordered convent." He found also that his subordinates were plundering the surrounding country, and thus rendering it disaffected; he at once ordered that what had been taken should be paid for, and that persons trespassing thereafter should be severely punished. He found also the great nobles who commanded in the army half-hearted and almost traitorous from sympathy with those of their own caste on the other side of the walls of La Rochelle, and from their fear of his increased power, should he gain a victory. It was their common saying, that they were fools to help him do it. But he saw the true point at once—He placed in the most responsible positions of his army men who felt for his cause, whose hearts and souls were in it,—men not of the Dalgetty stamp, but of the Cromwell stamp. He found also, as he afterward said, that he had to conquer not only the Kings of England and Spain, but also the King of France. At the most critical moment of the siege Louis deserted him,—went back to Paris,—allowed courtiers to fill him with suspicions. Not only Richelieu's place, but his life, was in danger, and he well knew it; yet he never left his dike and siege-works, but wrought on steadily until they were done; and then the King, of his own will, in very shame, broke away from his courtiers, and went back to his master.

And now a Royal Herald summoned the people of La Rochelle to surrender. But they were not yet half conquered. Even when they had seen two English fleets, sent to aid them, driven back from Richelieu's dike, they still held out manfully. The Duchess of Rohan, the Mayor Guiton, and the Minister Salbert, by noble sacrifices and burning words, kept the will of the besieged firm as steel. They were reduced to feed on their horses,—then on bits of filthy shell-fish,—then on stewed leather. They died in multitudes.

Guiton the Mayor kept a dagger on the city council-table to stab any man who should speak of surrender; some who spoke of yielding he ordered to execution as seditious. When a friend showed him a person dying of hunger, be said, "Does that astonish you? Both you and I must come to that." When another told him that multitudes were perishing, he said, "Provided one remains to hold the city-gate, I ask nothing more."

But at last even Guiton had to yield. After the siege had lasted more than a year, after five thousand were found remaining out of fifteen thousand, after a mother had been seen to feed her child with her own blood, the Cardinal's policy became too strong for him. The people yielded, and Richelieu entered the city as master.

And now the victorious statesman showed a greatness of soul to which all the rest of his life was as nothing. He was a Catholic cardinal,—the Rochellois were Protestants; he was a stern ruler,—they were rebellious subjects who had long worried and almost impoverished him;—all Europe, therefore, looked for a retribution more terrible than any in history.

Richelieu allowed nothing of the sort. He destroyed the old franchises of the city, for they were incompatible with that royal authority which he so earnestly strove to build. But this was all. He took no vengeance,—he allowed the Protestants to worship as before,—he took many of them into the public service,—and to Guiton he showed marks of respect. He stretched forth that strong arm of his over the city, and warded off all harm. He kept back greedy soldiers from pillage,—he kept back bigot priests from persecution. Years before this he had said, "The diversity of religions may indeed create a division in the other world, but not in this"; at another time he wrote, "Violent remedies only aggravate spiritual diseases." And he was now so tested, that these expressions were found to embody not merely an idea, but a belief. For, when the Protestants in La Rochelle, though thug owing tolerance and even existence to a Catholic, vexed Catholics in a spirit most intolerant, even that could not force him to abridge the religious liberties he had given.

He saw beyond his time,—not only beyond Catholics, but beyond Protestants. Two years after that great example of toleration in La Rochelle, Nicholas Antoine w as executed for apostasy from Calvinism at Geneva. And for his leniency Richelieu received the titles of Pope of the Protestants and Patriarch of the Atheists. But he had gained the first great object of his policy, and he would not abuse it: he had crushed the political power of the Huguenots forever.

Let us turn now to the second great object of his policy. He must break the power of the nobility: on that condition alone could France have strength and order, and here he showed his daring at the outset. "It is iniquitous," he was wont to tell the King, "to try to make an example by punishing the lesser offenders: they are but trees which cast no shade: it is the great nobles who must be disciplined."

It was not long before he had to begin this work,—and with the highest,—with no less a personage than Gaston, Duke of Orleans,—favorite son of Mary,—brother of the King. He who thinks shall come to a higher idea of Richelieu's boldness, when he remembers that for many years after this Louis was childless and sickly, and that during all those years Richelieu might awake any morning to find Gaston—King.

In 1626, Gaston, with the Duke of Vendôme, half-brother of the King, the Duchess of Chevreuse, confidential friend of the Queen, the Count of Soissons, the Count of Chalais, and the Marshal Ornano, formed a conspiracy after the old fashion. Richelieu had his hand at their lofty throats in a moment. Gaston, who was used only as a makeweight, he forced into the most humble apologies and the most binding pledges; Ornano he sent to die in the Bastille; the Duke of Vendôme and the Duchess of Chevreuse he banished; Chalais he sent to the scaffold.

The next year he gave the grandees another lesson. The serf-owning spirit had fostered in France, through many years, a rage for duelling. Richelieu determined that this should stop. He gave notice that the law against duelling was revived, and that he would enforce it. It was soon broken by two of the loftiest nobles in France,—by the Count of Bouteville-Montmorency and the Count des Chapelles. They laughed at the law: they fought defiantly in broad daylight. Nobody dreamed that the law would be carried out against them. The Cardinal would, they thought, deal with them as rulers have dealt with serf-mastering law-breakers from those days to these,—invent some quibble and screen them with it. But his method was sharper and shorter. He seized both, and executed both on the Place de Greve,—the place of execution for the vilest malefactors.

No doubt, that, under the present domineering of the pettifogger caste, there are hosts of men whose minds run in such small old grooves that they hold legal forms not a means, but an end: these will cry out against this proceeding as tyrannical. No doubt, too, that, under the present palaver of the "sensationist" caste, the old ladies of both sexes have come to regard crime as mere misfortune: these will lament this proceeding as cruel. But, for this act, if for no other, an earnest man's heart ought in these times to warm toward the great statesman. The man had a spine. To his mind crime was cot mere misfortune: crime was CRIME. Crime was strong; it would pay him well to screen it; it might cost him dear to fight it. But he was not a modern "smart" lawyer, to seek popularity by screening criminals,—nor a modern soft juryman, to suffer his eyes to be blinded by quirks and quibbles to the great purposes of law,—nor a modern bland governor, who lets a murderer loose out of politeness to the murderer's mistress. He hated crime; he whipped the criminal; no petty forms and no petty men of forms could stand between him and a rascal. He had the sense to see that this course was not cruel, but merciful. See that for yourselves. In the eighteen years before Richelieu's administration, four thousand men perished in duels; in the ten years after Richelieu's death, nearly a thousand thus perished; but during his whole administration, duelling was checked completely. Which policy was tyrannical? which policy was cruel?

The hatred of the serf-mastering caste toward their new ruler grew blacker and blacker; but he never flinched. The two brothers Marillac, proud of birth, high in office, endeavored to stir revolt as in their good days of old. The first, who was Keeper of the Seals, Richelieu threw into prison; with the second, who was a Marshal of France, Richelieu took another course. For this Marshal had added to revolt things more vile and more insidiously hurtful: he had defrauded the Government in army-contracts. Richelieu tore him from his army and put him on trial. The Queen-Mother, whose pet he was, insisted on his liberation. Marillac himself blubbered, that it "was all about a little straw and hay, a matter for which a master would not whip a lackey." Marshal Marillac was executed. So, when statesmen rule, fare all who take advantage of the agonies of a nation to pilfer a nation's treasure.

To crown all, the Queen-Mother began now to plot against Richelieu, because he would not be her puppet,—and he banished her from France forever.

The high nobles were now exasperate. Gaston tied the country, first issuing against Richelieu a threatening manifesto. Now awoke the Duke of Montmorency. By birth he stood next the King's family: by office, as Constable of France, he stood next the King himself. Montmorency was defeated and taken. The nobles supplicated for him lustily: they looked on crimes of nobles resulting in deaths of plebeians as lightly as the English House of Lords afterward looked on Lord Mohun's murder of Will Mountfort, or as another body of lords looked on Matt Ward's murder of Professor Butler: but Montmorency was executed. Says Richelieu, in his Memoirs, "Many murmured at this act, and called it severe; but others, more wise, praised the justice of the King, who preferred the good of the State to the vain reputation of a hurtful clemency."

Nor did the great minister grow indolent as he grew old. The Duke of Epernon, who seems to have had more direct power of the old feudal sort than any other man in France, and who had been so turbulent under the Regency,—him Richelieu humbled completely. The Duke of La Valette disobeyed orders in the army, and he was executed as a common soldier would have been for the same offence. The Count of Soissons tried to see if he could not revive the good old turbulent times, and raised a rebel army; but Richelieu hunted him down like a wild beast. Then certain Court nobles,—pets of the King,—Cinq-Mars and De Thou, wove a new plot, and, to strengthen it, made a secret treaty with Spain; but the Cardinal, though dying, obtained a copy of the treaty, through his agent, and the traitors expiated their treason with their blood.

But this was not all. The Parliament of Paris,—a court of justice,—filled with the idea that law is not a means, but an end, tried to interpose forms between the Master of France and the vermin he was exterminating. That Parisian court might, years before, have done something. They might have insisted that petty quibbles set forth by the lawyers of Paris should not defeat the eternal laws of retribution set forth by the Lawgiver of the Universe. That they had not done, and the time for legal forms had gone by. The Paris Parliament would not see this, and Richelieu crushed the Parliament. Then the Court of Aids refused to grant supplies, and he crushed that court. In all this the nation braced him. Woe to the courts of a nation, when they have forced the great body of plain men to regard legality as injustice!—woe to the councils of a nation, when they have forced the great body of plain men to regard legislation as traffic!—woe, thrice repeated, to gentlemen of the small pettifogger sort, when they have brought such times, and God has brought a man to fit them!

There was now in France no man who could stand against the statesman's purpose.

And so, having hewn, through all that anarchy and bigotry and selfishness, a way for the people, he called them to the work. In 1626 he summoned an assembly to carry out reforms. It was essentially a people's assembly. That anarchical States-General, domineered by great nobles, he would not call; but he called an Assembly of Notables. In this was not one prince or duke, and two-thirds of the members came directly from the people. Into this body he thrust some of his own energy. Measures were taken for the creation of a navy. An idea was now carried into effect which many suppose to have sprung from the French Revolution; for the army was made more effective by opening its high grades to the commons.3 A reform was also made in taxation, and shrewd measures were taken to spread commerce and industry by calling the nobility into them.

Thus did France, under his guidance, secure order and progress. Calmly he destroyed all useless feudal castles which had so long overawed the people and defied the monarchy. He abolished also the military titles of Grand Admiral and High Constable, which had hitherto given the army and navy into the hands of leading noble families. He destroyed some troublesome remnants of feudal courts, and created royal courts: in one year that of Poitiers alone punished for exactions and violence against the people more than two hundred nobles. Greatest step of all, he deposed the hereditary noble governors, and placed in their stead governors taken from the people,—Intendants,—responsible to the central authority alone.4

We are brought now to the third great object of Richelieu's policy. He saw from the beginning that Austria and her satellite Spain must be humbled, if France was to take her rightful place in Europe.

Hardly, then, had he entered the council, when he negotiated a marriage of the King's sister with the son of James I. of England; next he signed an alliance with Holland; next he sent ten thousand soldiers to drive the troops of the Pope and Spain out of the Valtelline district of the Alps, and thus secured an alliance with the Swiss. We are to note here the fact which Buckle wields so well, that, though Richelieu was a Cardinal of the Roman Church, all these alliances were with Protestant powers against Catholic.5 Austria and Spain intrigued against him,—sowing money in the mountain-districts of South France which brought forth those crops of armed men who defended La Rochelle. But he beat them at their own game. He set loose Count Mansfyld, who revived the Thirty Tears' War by raising a rebellion in Bohemia; and when one great man, Wallenstein, stood between Austria and ruin, Richelieu sent his monkish diplomatist, Father Joseph, to the German Assembly of Electors, and persuaded them to dismiss Wallenstein and to disgrace him.

But the great Frenchman's master-stroke was his treaty with Gustavus Adolphus. With that keen glance of his, he saw and knew Gustavus while yet the world knew him not,—while he was battling afar off in the wilds of Poland. Richelieu's plan was formed at once. He brought about a treaty between Gustavus and Poland; then he filled Gustavus's mind with pictures of the wrongs inflicted by Austria on German Protestants, hinted to him probably of a new realm, filled his treasury, and finally hurled against Austria the man who destroyed Tilly, who conquered Wallenstein, who annihilated Austrian supremacy at the Battle of Lüizen, who, though in his grave, wrenched Protestant rights from Austria at the Treaty of Westphalia, who pierced the Austrian monarchy with the most terrible sorrows it ever saw before the time of Napoleon.

To the main objects of Richelieu's policy already given might be added two subordinate objects.

The first of these was a healthful extension of French territory. In this Richelieu planned better than the first Napoleon; for, while he did much to carry France out to her natural boundaries, he kept her always within them. On the South he added Roussillon, on the East, Alsace, on the Northeast, Artois.

The second subordinate object of his policy sometimes flashed forth brilliantly. He was determined that England should never again interfere on French soil. We have seen him driving the English from La Rochelle and from the Isle of Rhé; but he went farther. In 1628, on making some proposals to England, he was repulsed with English haughtiness. "They shall know," said the Cardinal, "that they cannot despise me." Straightway one sees protests and revolts of the Presbyterians of Scotland, and Richelieu's agents in the thickest of them.

And now what was Richelieu's statesmanship in its sum?

I. In the Political Progress of France, his work has already been sketched as building monarchy and breaking anarchy.

Therefore have men said that he swept away old French liberties. What old liberties? Richelieu but tore away the decaying, poisonous husks and rinds which hindered French liberties from their chance at life and growth.

Therefore, also, have men said that Richelieu built up absolutism. The charge is true and welcome. For, evidently, absolutism was the only force, in that age, which could destroy the serf-mastering caste. Many a Polish patriot, as he to-day wanders through the Polish villages, groans that absolutism was not built to crush that serf-owning aristocracy which has been the real architect of Poland's ruin. Any one who reads to much purpose in De Mably, or Guizot, or Henri Martin, knows that this part of Richelieu's statesmanship was but a masterful continuation of all great French statesmanship since the twelfth-century league of king and commons against nobles, and that Richelieu stood in the heirship of all great French statesmen since Suger. That part of Richelieu's work, then, was evidently bedded in the great line of Divine Purpose running through that age and through all ages.

II. In the Internal Development of France, Richelieu proved himself a true builder. The founding of the French Academy and of the Jardin des Plantes, the building of the College of Plessis, and the rebuilding of the College of the Sorbonne, are among the monuments of this part of his statesmanship. His, also, is much of that praise usually lavished on Louis XIV. for the career opened in the seventeenth century to science, literature, and art. He was also a reformer, and his zeal was proved, when, in the fiercest of the La Rochelle struggle, he found time to institute great reforms not only in the army and navy, but even in the monasteries.