With all his temper and the hesitations born of his melancholy mind, Louis XIII. could appreciate and discern the great interests of his kingdom and of his power. The queen had supposed that the king would abandon the cardinal, and "that her private authority as mother, and the pious affection and honor the king showed her as her son, would prevail over the public care which he ought, as king, to take of his kingdom and his people. But God, who holds in His hand the hearts of princes, disposed things otherwise: his Majesty resolved to defend his servant against the malice of those who prompted the queen to this wicked design." [Memoires de Richelieu.] He conversed a long while with the cardinal, and when the keeper of the seals awoke the next morning, it was to learn that the minister was at Versailles with the king, who had lodged him in a room under his own, that his Majesty demanded the seals back, and that the exons were at his, Marillac's, door to secure his person.

At the same time was despatched a courier to headquarters at Foglizzo in Piedmont. The three marshals Schomberg, La Force, and Marillac, had all formed a junction there. Marillac, brother of the keeper of the seals, held the command that day; and he was awaiting with patience the news, already announced by his brother, of the cardinal's disgrace. Marshal Schomberg opened the despatches; and the first words that met his eye were these, written in the king's own hand: "My dear cousin, you will not fail to arrest Marshal Marillac; it is for the good of my service and for your own exculpation." The marshal was greatly embarrassed; a great part of the troops had come with Marillac from the army of Champagne and were devoted to him. Schomberg determined, on the advice of Marshal La Force, in full council of captains, to show Marillac the postcript. "Sir," answered the marshal, "a subject must not murmur against his master, nor say of him that the things he alleges are false. I can protest with truth that I have done nothing contrary to his service. The truth is, that my brother the keeper of the seals and I have always been the servants of the queen-mother; she must have had the worst of it, and Cardinal Richelieu has won the day against her and her servants." [Memoires de Puy-Seyur.]

Thus arrested in the very midst of the army he commanded, Marshal Marillac was taken to the castle of St. Menehould and thence to Verdun, where a court of justice extraordinary sat upon his case. It was cleared of any political accusation: the marshal was prosecuted for peculation and extortion, common crimes at that time with many generals, and always odious to the nation, which regarded their punishment with favor. "It is a very strange thing," said Marillac, "to prosecute me as they do; my trial is a mere question of hay, straw, wood, stones, and lime; there is not case enough for whipping a lackey." There was case enough for sentencing to death a marshal of France. The proceedings lasted eighteen months; the commission was transferred from Verdun to Ruel, to the very house of the cardinal. Marillac was found guilty by a majority of one only. The execution took place on the 10th of May, 1632. The former keeper of the seals, Michael de Marillac, died of decline at Chateaudun, three months after the death of his brother.

Dupes' Day was over and lost. The queen-mother's attack on Richelieu had failed before the minister's ascendency and the king's calculating fidelity to a servant he did not like; but Mary de' Medici's anger was not calmed, and the struggle remained set between her and the cardinal. The Duke of Orleans, who had lost his wife after a year's marriage, had not hitherto joined his mother's party, but all on a sudden, excited by his grievances, he arrived at the cardinal's, on the 30th of January, 1631, "with a strong escort, and told him that he would consider it a strange purpose that had brought him there; that, so long as he supposed that the cardinal would serve him, he had been quite willing to show him amity; now, when he saw that he foiled him in everything that be had promised, to such extent that the way in which he, Monsieur, had behaved himself, had served no end but to make the world believe that he had abandoned the queen his mother, he had come to take back the word he had given him to show him affection." On leaving the cardinal's house, Monsieur got into his carriage and went off in haste to Orleans, whilst the king, having received notice from Richelieu, was arriving with all despatch from Versailles to assure his minister "of his protection, well knowing that nobody could wish him ill, save for the faithful services he rendered him." [Memoires de Richelieu, t. ii. p. 444.]

The queen-mother had undoubtedly been aware of the Duke of Orleans' project, for she had given up to him Madame's jewels which he had confided to her; she nevertheless sent her equerry to the king, protesting "that she had been much astonished when she heard of Monsieur's departure, that she had almost fainted on the spot, and that Monsieur had sent her word that he was going away from court because he could no longer tolerate the cardinal's violent proceedings against her.

"When the king signified to her that he considered this withdrawal very strange, and let her know that he had much trouble in believing that she knew nothing about it, she took occasion to belch forth fire and flames against the cardinal, and made a fresh attempt to ruin him in the king's estimation, though she had previously bound herself by oath to take no more steps against him." [Memoires de Richelieu, t. ii. p. 465.]

The cardinal either had not sworn at all or did not consider himself more bound than the queen by oaths. Their Majesties set out for Compiegne; there the minister brought the affair before the council, explaining with a skilful appearance of indifference the different courses to be taken, and ending by propounding the question of his own retirement or the queen-mother's. "His Majesty, without hesitation, made his own choice, taking the resolution of returning to Paris and of begging the queen-mother to retire for the time being to one of his mansions, particularly recommending Moulins, which she had formerly expressed to the late king a wish to have; and, in order that she might be the better contented with it, he offered her the government of it and of all the province." Next day, February 23, 1631, before the queen-mother was up, her royal son had taken the road back to Paris, leaving Marshal D'Estrees at Compiegne to explain to the queen his departure and to hasten his mother's, a task in which the marshal had but small success, for Mary de' Medici declared that, if they, meant to make her depart, they would have to drag her stark naked from her bed. She kept herself shut up in the castle, refusing to go out and complaining of the injury the seclusion did to her health; then she fled by night from Compiegne, attended by one gentleman only, to go and take refuge in Flanders, whence she arrived before long at Brussels.

The cardinal's game was definitively won. Mary de' Medici had lost all empire over her son, whom she was never to see again.

The Duke of Orleans meanwhile had taken the road to Lorraine, seeking a refuge in the dominions of a prince able, crafty, restless, and hostile to France from inclination as well as policy. Smitten, before long, with the duke's sister, Princess Margaret, Gaston of Orleans married her privately, with a dispensation from the Cardinal of Lorraine, all which did not prevent either duke or prince from barefacedly denying the marriage when the king reproached them with having contracted this marriage without his consent. In the month of June, 1632, the Duke of Orleans entered France again at the head of some wretched regiments, refuse of the Spanish army, given to him by Don Gonzalvo di Cordova. For the first time, he raised the standard of revolt openly. For him it was of little consequence, accustomed as he was to place himself at the head of parties that he abandoned without shame in the hour of danger; but he dragged along with him in his error a man worthy of another fate and of another chief. Henry, Duke of Montmorency, marshal of France, and governor of Languedoc, was a godson of Henry IV., who said one day to M. de Villeroy and to President Jeannin, "Look at my son Montmorency, how well made he is; if ever the house of Bourbon came to fail, there is no family in Europe which would so well deserve the crown of France as, his, whose great men have always supported it, and even added to it at the price of their blood." Shining at court as well as in arms, kind and charitable, beloved of everybody and adored by his servants, the Duke of Montmorency had steadily remained faithful to the king up to the fatal day when the Duke of Orleans entangled him in his hazardous enterprise. Languedoc was displeased with Richelieu, who had robbed it of some of its privileges; the duke had no difficulty in collecting adherents there; and he fancied himself to be already wielding the constable's sword, five times borne by a Montmorency, when Gaston of Orleans entered France and Languedoc sooner than he had been looked for, and with a smaller following than he had promised. The eighteen hundred men brought by the king's brother did not suffice to re-establish him, with the queen his mother, in the kingdom; the governor of Languedoc made an appeal to the Estates then assembled at Pezenas; he was supported by the Bishop of Alby and by that of Nimes; the province itself proclaimed revolt. The sums demanded by the king were granted to the duke, whom the deputies prayed to remain faithful to the interests of the province, just as they promised never to abandon his. The Archbishop of Narbonne alone opposed this rash act; he left the Estates, where he was president, and the duke marched out to meet Monsieur as far as Lunel. "Troops were levied throughout the province and the environs as openly as if it had been for the king." But the regiments were slow in forming; the Duke of Orleans wished to gain over some of the towns; Narbonne and Montpellier closed their gates. The bishop's influence had been counted upon for making sure of Nimes, and Montmorency everywhere tried to practise on the Huguenots; "but the Reformed ministers of Nimes, having had advices by letter from his Majesty, whereby he represented himself to have been advertised that the principal design of Monsieur was to excite them of the religion styled Reformed, considered themselves bound in their own defence to do more than the rest for the king's service. They assembled the consistory, resolved to die in obedience to him, went to seek the consuls and requested them to have the town-council assembled, in order that it might be brought to take a similar resolution; which the consuls, gained over by M. de Montmorency, refused." [Memoires de Richelieu, t. iii. p. 160.] Thereupon the ministers sent off in haste to Marshal La Force, who had already taken position at Pont-Saint-Esprit with his army; and, he having despatched some light horse on the 26th of July, the people cried, "Hurrah! for the king!" the bishop was obliged to fly, and the town was kept to its allegiance. "Beaucaire, the governor of which had been won over," made armed resistance. "If we beat the king's army," said the Duke of Montmorency on returning to Pezenas after this incident, "we shall have no lack of towns; if not, we shall have to go and make our court at Brussels."

At the news of his brother's revolt, the king, who happened to be on the frontiers of Lorraine, had put himself in motion, but he marched at his ease and by short stages, "thinking that the fire Monsieur would kindle would be only a straw fire."

He hurried his movements when he heard of Montmorency's uprising, and left Paris after having put the seals upon the duke's house, who had imprudently left five hundred and fifty thousand livres there; the money was seized and lodged in the royal safe. The Princess of Guemene, between whom and Montmorency there were very strong ties, went to see the cardinal, who was in attendance on the king. "Sir," she said to him, "you are going to Languedoc; remember the great marks of attachment that M. de Montmorency showed you not long ago; you cannot forget then without ingratitude." Indeed, when the king believed himself to be dying at Lyons, he had recommended the cardinal to the Duke of Montmorency, who had promised to receive him into his government. "Madam," replied Richelieu coldly, "I have not been the first to break off."

Already the Parliament of Toulouse, remaining faithful to the king, had annulled the resolutions of the Estates, the letters and commissions of the governor; and the Parliament of Paris had just enregistered a resolution against the servants and adherents of the Duke of Orleans, as rebels guilty of high treason and disturbers of the common peace. Six weeks were granted the king's brother to put an end to all acts of hostility; else the king was resolved to decree against him, after that interval of delay, "whatsoever he should consider it his duty to do for the preservation of his kingdom, according to the laws of the realm and the example of his predecessors."

It was against Marshal Schomberg that Montmorency was advancing. The latter found himself isolated in his revolt, shut up within the limits of his government, between the two armies of the king, who was marching in person against him. Calculations had been based upon an uprising of several provinces and the adhesion of several governors, amongst others of the aged Duke of Epernon, who had sent to Monsieur to say, "I am his very humble servant; let him place himself in a position to be served;" but no one moved, the king every day received fresh protestations of fidelity, and the Duke of Epernon had repaired to Montauban to keep that restless city to its duty, and to prevent any attempt from being made in the province.

At three leagues' distance from Castelnaudary, Marshal Schomberg was besieging a castle called St. Felix-de-Carmain, which held out for the Duke of Orleans. Montmorency advanced to the aid of the place; he had two thousand foot and three thousand horse; and the Duke of Orleans accompanied him with a large number of gentlemen. The marshal had won over the defenders of St. Felix, and he was just half a league from Castelnaudary when he encountered the rebel army. The battle began almost at once. Count de Moret, natural son of Henry IV. and Jacqueline de Bueil, fired the first shot. Hearing the noise, Montmorency, who commanded the right wing, takes a squadron of cavalry, and, "urged on by that impetuosity which takes possession of all brave men at the like juncture, he spurs his horse forward, leaps the ditch which was across the road, rides over the musketeers, and, the mishap of finding himself alone causing him to feel more indignation than fear, he makes up his mind to signalize by his resistance a death which he cannot avoid." Only a few gentlemen had followed him, amongst others an old officer named Count de Rieux, who had promised to die at his feet and he kept his word. In vain had Montmorency called to him his men-at-arms and the regiment of Ventadour; the rest of the cavalry did not budge. Count de Moret had been killed; terror was everywhere taking possession of the men. The duke was engaged with the king's light horse; he had just received two bullets in his mouth. His horse, "a small barb, extremely swift," came down with him and he fell wounded in seventeen places, alone, without a single squire to help him. A sergeant of a company of the guards saw him fall, and carried him into the road; some soldiers who were present burst out crying; they seemed to be lamenting their general's rather than their prisoner's misfortune. Montmorency alone remained as if insensible to the blows of adversity, and testified by the grandeur of his courage that in him it had its seat in a place higher than the heart." [Journal du Duc de Montmorency (Archives curieuses de l'Histoire de France), t. iv.]



Whilst the army of the Duke of Orleans was retiring, carrying off their dead, nearly all of the highest rank, the king's men were bearing away Montnmorency, mortally wounded, to Castelnaudary. His wife, Mary Felicia des Ursins, daughter of the Duke of Bracciano, being ill in bed at Beziers, sent him a doctor, together with her equerry, to learn the truth about her husband's condition. "Thou'lt tell my wife," said the duke, "the number and greatness of the wounds thou hast seen, and thou'lt assure her that it which I have caused her spirit is incomparably more painful, to me than all the others." On passing through the faubourgs of the town, the duke desired that his litter should be opened, "and the serenity that shone through the pallor of his visage moved the feelings of all present, and forced tears from the stoutest and the most stolid." [Journal du Due de Montmorency (Archives curieuses de l'Histoire de France), t. iv.]

The Duke of Orleans did not lack the courage of the soldier; he would fain have rescued Montmorency and sought to rally his forces; but the troops of Languedoc would obey none but the governor; the foreigners mutinied, and the king's brother had no longer an army. "Next day, when it was too late," says Richelieu, "Monsieur sent a trumpeter to demand battle of Marshal Schomberg, who replied that he would not give it, but that, if he met him, he would try to defend himself against him." Monsieur considered himself absolved from seeking the combat, and henceforth busied himself about nothing but negotiation. Alby, Beziers, and Pezenas hastened to give in their submission. It was necessary for the Duchess of Montmorency, ill and in despair, to quicken her departure from Beziers, where she was no longer safe. "As she passed along the streets she heard nothing but a confusion of voices amongst the people, speaking insolently of those who would withdraw in apprehension." The king was already at Lyons.

He was at Pont-Saint-Esprit when he sent a message to his brother, from whom he had already received emissaries on the road. The first demands of Gaston d'Orleans were still proud; he required the release of Montmorency, the rehabilitation of all those who had served his party and his mother's, places of surety and money. The king took no notice; and a second envoy from the prince was put in prison. Meanwhile, the superintendent of finance, M. de Bullion, had reached him from the king, and "found the mind of Monsieur very penitent and well disposed, but not that of all the rest, for Monsieur confessed that he had been ill-advised to behave as he did at the cardinal's house, and afterwards leave the court; acknowledging himself to be much obliged to the king for the clemency he had shown to him in his proclamation, which had touched him to the heart, and that he was bounden therefor to the cardinal, whom he had always liked and esteemed, and believed that he also on his side liked him." [Memoires de Richelieu, t. viii. p. 196.]

The Duchess of Montmorency knew Monsieur, although she, it was said, had pressed her husband to join him; and all ill as she was, had been following him ever since the battle of Castelnaudary, in the fear lest he should forget her husband in the treaty. She could not, unfortunately, enter Beziers, and it was there that the arrangements were concluded. Monsieur protested his repentance, cursing in particular Father Chanteloube, confessor and confidant of the queen his mother, "whom he wished the king would have hanged; he had given pretty counsel to the queen, causing her to leave the kingdom; for all the great hopes he had led her to conceive, she was reduced to relieve her weariness by praying to God." [Memoires de Richelieu, t. viii. p. 196.] As for Monsieur, he was ready to give up all intelligence with Spain, Lorraine, and the queen his mother, "who could negotiate her business herself." He bound himself to take no interest "in him or those who had connected themselves with him on these occasions for their own purposes, and he would not complain should the king make them suffer what they had deserved." It is true that he added to these base concessions many entreaties in favor of M. de Montmorency; but M. de Bullion did not permit him to be under any delusion. "It is for your Highness to choose," he said, "whether or not you prefer to cling to the interests of M. de Montmorency, displease the king and lose his good graces." The prince signed everything; then he set out for Tours, which the king had assigned for his residence, receiving on the way, from town to town, all the honors that would have been paid to his Majesty himself. M. de Montmorency remained in prison.

"He awaited death with a resignation which is inconceivable," says the author of his Memoires; "never did man speak more boldly than he about it; it seemed as if he were recounting another's perils when he described his own to his servants and his guards, who were the only witnesses of such lofty manliness." His sister, the Princess of Conde, had a memorial prepared for his defence put before him. He read it carefully, then he tore it up, "having always determined," he said, "not to (chicaner) go pettifogging for (or, dispute) his life." "I ought by rights to answer before the Parliament of Paris only," said he to the commission of the Parliament of Toulouse instructed to conduct his trial, "but I give up with all my heart this privilege and all others that might delay my sentence."

There was not long to wait for the decree. On arriving at Toulouse, October 27, at noon, the duke had asked for a confessor. "Father," said he to the priest, "I pray you to put me this moment in the shortest and most certain path to heaven that you can, having nothing more to hope or wish for but God." All his family had hurried up, but without being able to obtain the favor of seeing the king. "His Majesty had strengthened himself in the resolution he had taken from the first to make in the case of the said Sieur de Montmorency a just example for all the grandees of his kingdom in the future, as the late king his father had done in the person of Marshal Biron," says Richelieu in his Memoires. The Princess of Conde could not gain admittance to his Majesty, who lent no ear to the supplications of his oldest servants, represented by the aged Duke of Epernon, who accused himself by his own mouth of having but lately committed the same crime as the Duke of Montmorency. "You can retire, duke," was all that Louis XIII. deigned to reply. "I should not be a king if I had the feelings of private persons," said he to Marshal Chatillon, who pointed out to him the downcast looks and swollen eyes of all his court.

It was the 30th of October, early: and the Duke of Montmorency was sleeping peacefully. His confessor came and awoke him. "Surgite, eamus (rise, let us be going)," he said, as he awoke; and when his surgeon would have dressed his wounds, "Now is the time to heal all my wounds with a single one," he said, and he had himself dressed in the clothes of white linen he had ordered to be made at Lectoure for the day of execution. When the last questions were put to him by the judges, he answered by a complete confession; and when the decree was made known to him, "I thank you, gentlemen," said he to the commissioners, "and I beg you to tell all them of your body from me, that I hold this decree of the king's justice for a decree of God's mercy." He walked to the scaffold with the same tranquillity, saluting right and left those whom he knew, to take leave of them; then, having with difficulty placed himself upon the block, so much did his wounds still cause him to suffer, he said out loud, "Domine Jesu, accipe spiritum meum (Lord Jesus, receive my spirit)!" As his head fell, the people rushed forward to catch his blood and dip their handkerchiefs in it.

Henry de Montmorency was the last of the ducal branch of his house, and was only thirty-seven.

It was a fine opportunity for Monsieur to once more break his engagements. Shame and anxiety drove him equally. He was universally reproached with Montmorency's death; and he was by no means easy on the subject of his marriage, of which no mention had been made in the arrangements. He quitted Tours and withdrew to Flanders, writing to the king to complain of the duke's execution, saying that the life of the latter had been the tacit condition of his agreement, and that, his promise being thus not binding, he was about to seek a secure retreat out of the kingdom. "Everybody knows in what plight you were, brother, and whether you could have done anything else," replied the king.

"What think you, gentlemen, was it that lost the Duke of Montmorency his head?" said Cardinal Zapata to Bautru and Barrault, envoys of France, whom he met in the antechamber of the King of Spain. "His crimes," replied Bautru. "No," said the cardinal, "but the clemency of his Majesty's predecessors." Louis XIII. and Cardinal Richelieu have assuredly not merited that, reproach in history.

So many and such terrible examples were at last to win the all-powerful minister some years of repose. Once only, in 1636, a new plot on the part of Monsieur and the Count of Soissons threatened not only his power, but his life. The king's headquarters were established at the castle of Demuin; and the princes, urged on by Montresor and Saint-Ibal, had resolved to compass the cardinal's death. The blow was to be struck at the exit from the council. Richelieu conducted the king back to the bottom of the staircase.



The two gentlemen were awaiting the signal; but Monsieur did not budge, and retired without saying a word. The Count of Soissons dared not go any further, and the cardinal mounted quietly to his own rooms, without dreaming of the extreme peril he had run. Richelieu was rather lofty than proud, and too clear-sighted to mistake the king's feelings towards him. Never did he feel any confidence in his position; and never did he depart from his jealous and sometimes petty watchfulness. Any influence foreign to his own disquieted him in proximity to a master whose affairs he governed altogether, without ever having been able to get the mastery over his melancholy and singular mind.

Women filled but a small space in the life of Louis XIII. Twice, however, in that interval of ten years which separated the plot of Montmorency from that of Cinq-Mars, did the minister believe himself to be threatened by feminine influence; and twice he used artifice to win the monarch's heart and confidence from two young girls of his court, Louise de La Fayette and Marie d'Hautefort. Both were maids of honor to the queen. Mdlle. d'Hautefort was fourteen years old when, in 1630, at Lyons, in the languors of convalescence, the king first remarked her blooming and at the same time severe beauty, and her air of nobility and modesty; and it was not long before the whole court knew that he had remarked her, for his first care, at the sermon, was to send the young maid of honor the velvet cushion on which he knelt for her to sit upon. Mdlle. d'Hautefort declined it, and remained seated, like her companions, on the ground; but henceforth the courtiers' eyes were riveted on her movements, on the interminable conversations in which she was detained by the king, on his jealousies, his tiffs, and his reconciliations. After their quarrels, the king would pass the greater part of the day in writing out what he had said to Mdlle. d'Hautefort and what she had replied to him. At his death, his desk was found full of these singular reports of the most innocent, but also most stormy and most troublesome love-affair that ever was. The king was especially jealous of Mdlle. d'Hautefort's passionate devotion to the queen her mistress, Anne of Austria. "You love an ingrate," he said, "and you will see how she will repay your services." Richelieu had been unable to win Mdlle. d'Hautefort; and he did his best to embitter the tiff which separated her from the king in 1635. But Louis XIII. had learned the charm of confidence and intimacy; and he turned to Louise de La Fayette, a charming girl of seventeen, who was as virtuous as Mdlle. d'Hautefort, but more gentle and tender than she, and who gave her heart in all guilelessness to that king so powerful, so a-weary, and so melancholy at the very climax of his reign. Happily for Richelieu, he had a means, more certain than even Mdlle. d'Hautefort's pride, of separating her from Louis XIII.; Mdlle. de La Fayette, whilst quite a child, had serious ideas of becoming a nun; and scruples about being false to her vocation troubled her at court, and even in those conversations in which she reproached herself with taking too much pleasure, Father Coussin, her confessor, who was also the king's, sought to quiet her conscience; he hoped much from the influence she could exercise over the king; but Mdlle. de La Fayette, feeling herself troubled and perplexed, was urgent. When the Jesuit reported to Louis XIII. the state of his fair young friend's feelings, the king, with tears in his eyes, replied, "Though I am very sorry she is going away, nevertheless I have no desire to be an obstacle to her vocation; only let her wait until I have left for the army." She did not wait, however. Their last interview took place at the queen's, who had no liking for Mdlle. de La Fayette; and, as the king's carriage went out of the court-yard, the young girl, leaning against the window, turned to one of her companions and said, "Alas! I shall never see him again!" But she did see him again often for some time. He went to see her in her convent, and "remained so long glued to her grating," says Madame de Motteville, that Cardinal Richelieu, falling a prey to fresh terrors, recommenced his intrigues to tear him from her entirely. And he succeeded." The king's affection for Mdlle. d'Hautefort awoke again. She had just rendered the queen an important service. Anne of Austria was secretly corresponding with her two brothers, King Philip IV. and the Cardinal Infante, a correspondence which might well make the king and his minister uneasy, since it was carried on through Madame de Chevreuse, and there was war at the time with Spain. The queen employed for this intercourse a valet named Laporte, who was arrested and thrown into prison. The chancellor removed to Val-de-Grace, whither the queen frequently retired; he questioned the nuns and rummaged Anne of Austria's cell. She was in mortal anxiety, not knowing what Laporte might say or how to unloose his tongue, so as to keep due pace with her own confessions to the king and the cardinal. Mdlle. d'Hautefort disguised herself as a servant, went straight to the Bastille, and got a letter delivered to Laporte, thanks to the agency of Commander de Jars, her friend, then in prison. The confessions of mistress and agent being thus set in accord, the queen obtained her pardon, but not without having to put up with reproaches and conditions of stern supervision. Madame de Chevreuse took fright, and went to seek refuge in Spain. The king's inclination towards Mdlle. d'Hautefort revived, without her having an idea of turning it to profit on her own account. "She had so much loftiness of spirit that she could never have brought herself to ask anything for herself and her family; and all that could be wrung from her was to accept what the king and queen were pleased to give her."

Richelieu had never forgotten Mdlle. d'Hautefort's airs: he feared her, and accused her to the king of being concerned in Monsieur's continual intrigues. Louis XIII.'s growing affection for young Cinq-Mars, son of Marshal d'Effiat, was beginning to occupy the gloomy monarch; and he the more easily sacrificed Mdlle. d'Hautefort. The cardinal merely asked him to send her away for a fortnight. She insisted upon hearing the order from the king's own mouth. "The fortnight will last all the rest of my life," she said: "and so I take leave of your Majesty forever." She went accompanied by the regrets and tears of Anne of Austria, and leaving the field open to the new favorite, the king's "rattle," as the cardinal called him.

M. de Cinq-Mars was only nineteen when he was made master of the wardrobe and grand equerry of France. Brilliant and witty, he amused the king and occupied the leisure which peace gave him. The passion Louis XIII. felt for his favorite was jealous and capricious. He upbraided the young man for his flights to Paris to see his friends and the elegant society of the Marais, and sometimes also Mary di Gonzaga, daughter of the Duke of Mantua, wooed but lately by the Duke of Orleans, and not indifferent, it was said, to the vows of M. Le Grand, as Cinq-Mars was called. The complaints were detailed to Richelieu by the king himself in a strange correspondence, which reminds one of the "reports" of his quarrels with Mdlle. d'Hautefort. "I am very sorry," wrote Louis XIII. on the 4th of January, 1641, "to trouble you about the ill tempers of M. Le Grand. I upbraided him with his heedlessness; he answered that for that matter he could not change, and that he should do no better than he had done. I said that, considering his obligations to me, he ought not to address me in that manner. He answered in his usual way: that he didn't want my kindness, that he could do very well without it, and that he would be quite as well content to be Cinq-Mars as M. Le Grand, but, as for changing his ways and his life, he couldn't do it. And so, he continually knagging at me and I at him, we came as far as the court-yard, when I said to him that, being in the temper he was in, he would do me the pleasure of not coming to see me. I have not seen him since. Signed, Louis." This time the cardinal reconciled the king and the favorite, whom he had himself placed near him, but whose constant attendance upon the king his master he was beginning to find sometimes very troublesome. "One day he sent word to him not to be for the future so continually at his heels, and treated him even to his face with so much tartness and imperiousness as if he had been the lowest of his valets." Cinq-Mars began to lend an ear to those who were egging him on against the cardinal.

Then began a series of negotiations and intrigues; the Duke of Orleans had come back to Paris, the king was ill and the cardinal more so than he; thence arose conjectures and insensate hopes; the Duke of Bouillon, being sent for by the king, who confided to him the command of the army of Italy, was at the same time drawn into the plot which was beginning to be woven against the minister; the Duke of Orleans and the queen were in it; and the town of Sedan, of which Bouillon was prince-sovereign, was wanted to serve the authors of the conspiracy as an asylum in case of reverse. Sedan alone was not sufficient; there was need of an army. Whence was it to come? Thoughts naturally turned towards Spain.

For so perilous a treaty a negotiator was required, and the grand equerry proposed his friend, Viscount de Fontrailles, a man of wit, who detested the cardinal, and who would have considered it a simpler plan to assassinate him; he consented, however, to take charge of the negotiation, and he set out for Madrid, where his treaty was soon concluded, in the name of the Duke of Orleans. The Spaniards were to furnish twelve thousand foot and five thousand horse, four hundred thousand crowns down, twelve thousand crowns' pay a month, and three hundred thousand livres to fortify the frontier-town which was promised by the duke. Sedan, Cinq-Mars, and the Duke of Bouillon were only mentioned in a separate instrument.

The king was then at Narbonne, on his way to his army, which was besieging Perpignan. The grand equerry was with him. Fontrailles went to call upon him. "I do not intend to be seen by anybody," said he, "but to make speedily for England, as I do not think I am strong enough to undergo the torture the cardinal might put me to in his own room on the least suspicion." On the 21st of April, the cardinal was dangerously ill, and the king left him at Narbonne a prey to violent fever, with an abscess on the arm which prevented him from writing, whilst Cinq-Mars, ever present and ever at work, was doing his best to insinuate into his master's mind suspicion of the minister, and the hopes founded upon his disgrace or death. The king listened, as he subsequently avowed, in order to discover his favorite's wicked thoughts and make him tell all he had in his heart. "The king was tacitly the head of this conspiracy," says Madame de Motteville: "the grand equerry was the soul of it; the name made use of was that of the Duke of Orleans, the king's only brother; and their counsel was the Duke of Bouillon, who joined with them because, having belonged to the party of M. de Soissons, he was in very ill odor at court. They all formed fine projects touching the change that was to take place to the advantage of their aggrandizement and fortunes, persuading themselves that the cardinal could not live above a few days, during which he would not be able to set himself right with the king." Such were their projects and their hopes when the Gazette de France, on the 21st of June, 1642, gave these two pieces of news both together. "The cardinal-duke, after remaining two days at Arles, embarked on the 11th of this month for Tarascon, his health becoming better and better. The king has ordered under arrest Marquis de Cinq- Mars, grand equerry of France."

Great was the surprise, and still greater was the dismay, amongst the friends of Cinq-Mars. "Your grand designs are as well known at Paris as that the Seine flows under the Pont Neuf," wrote Mary di Gonzaga to him a few days previously.

Those grand designs so imprudently divulged caused a presentiment of great peril. When left alone with his young favorite, and suddenly overwhelmed, amidst his army, with cares and business of which his minister usually relieved him, the king had too much wit not to perceive the frivolous insignificance of Cinq-Mars compared with the mighty capability of the cardinal. "I love you more than ever," he wrote to Richelieu: "we have been too long together to be ever separated, as I wish everybody to understand. In reply, the cardinal had sent him a copy of the treaty between Cinq-Mars and Spain.

The king could not believe his eyes; and his wrath equalled his astonishment. Together with that of the grand equerry he ordered the immediate arrest of M. de Thou, his intimate friend; and the order went out to secure the Duke of Bouillon, then at the head of the army of Italy. He, caught, like Marshal Marillac, in the midst of his troops, had vainly attempted to conceal himself; but he was taken and conducted to the castle of Pignerol. Fontrailles had seen the blow coming. He went to visit the grand equerry, and, "Sir," said he, "you are a fine figure; if you were shorter by the whole head, you would not cease to be very tall; as for me, who am already very short, nothing could be taken off me without inconveniencing me and making me cut the poorest figure in the world; you will be good enough, if you please, to let me get out of the way of edged tools." And he set out for Spain, whence he had hardly returned.

What had become of the most guilty, if not the most dangerous, of all the accomplices? Monsieur, "the king's only (unique) brother," as Madame de Motteville calls him, had come as far as Moulins, and had sent to ask the grand equerry to appoint a place of meeting, when he heard of his accomplice's arrest, and, before long, that of the Duke of Bouillon. Frightened to death as he was, he saw that treachery was safer than flight, and, just as the king had joined the all but dying cardinal at Tarascon, there arrived an emissary from the Duke of Orleans bringing letters from him. He assured the king of his fidelity; he entreated Chavigny, the minister's confidant, to give him "means of seeing his Eminence before he saw the king, in which case all would go well." He appealed to the cardinal's generosity, begging him to keep his letter as an eternal reproach, if he were not thenceforth the most faithful and devoted of his friends.

Abbe de La Riviere, who was charged to implore pardon for his master, was worthy of such a commission: he confessed everything, he signed everything, though he "all but died of terror," and, at the cardinal's demand, he soon brought all those poltrooneries written out in the Duke of Orleans' own hand. The prince was all but obliged to appear at the trial and deliver up his accomplices in the face of the whole world. The respect, however, of Chancellor Seguier for his rank spared him this crowning disgrace. The king's orders to his brother, after being submitted to the cardinal, bore this note in the minister's hand: "Monsieur will have in his place of exile twelve thousand crowns a month, the same sum that the King of Spain had promised to give him."

"Paralysis of the arm did not prevent the head from acting;" the dying cardinal had dictated to the king, stretched on a couch at his side, in a chamber of his house at Monfrin, near Tarascon, those last commands which completed the dishonor of the Duke of Orleans and the ruin of the favorite. Louis XIII. slowly took the road back to Fontainebleau in the cardinal's litter, which the latter had lent him. The prisoners were left in the minister's keeping, who ordered them before long to Lyons, whither he was himself removed. The grand equerry coming from Montpellier, M. de Thou from Tarascon, in a boat towed by that of the cardinal, and the Duke of Bouillon from Pignerol, were all three lodged in the castle of Pierre-Encise. Their examination was put off until the arrival of such magistrates "as should be capable of philosophizing and perpetually thinking of the means they must use for arriving at their ends." That was useless, inasmuch as the grand equerry "never ceased to say quite openly that he had done nothing to which the king had not consented."

Louis XIII. was, no doubt, affected by such language; for, scarcely had he arrived at Fontainebleau, whither he had been preceded by news of the end of the queen his mother, who had died at Cologne in exile and poverty, when he wrote to all the parliaments of his kingdom, to the governors of the provinces, and to the ambassadors at foreign courts, to give his own account of the arrest of the guilty and the part he himself had played in the matter. "The notable and visible change which had for the last year appeared in the conduct of Sieur de Cinq-Mars, our grand equerry, made us resolve, as soon as we perceived it, to carefully keep watch on his actions and his words, in order to fathom them and discover what could be the cause. To this end, we resolved to let him act and speak with us more freely than heretofore." And in a letter written straight to the chancellor, the king exclaims in wrath, "It is true that having seen me sometimes dissatisfied with the cardinal, whether from the apprehension I felt lest he should hinder me from going to the siege of Perpignan, or induce me to leave it, for fear lest my health might suffer, or from any other like reason, the said Sieur de Cinq-Mars left nothing undone to chafe me against my said cousin, which I put up with so long as his evil offices were confined within the bounds of moderation. But when he went so far as to suggest to me that the cardinal must be got rid of, and offered to carry it out himself, I conceived a horror of his evil thoughts, and held them in detestation. Although I have only to say so for you to believe it, there is nobody who can deem but that it must have been so; for, otherwise, what motive would he have had for joining himself to Spain against me, if I had approved of what he desired?"

The trial was a foregone conclusion; the king and his brother made common cause in order to overwhelm the accused, "an earnest of a peace which was not such as God announced with good will to man on Christmas day," writes Madame de Motteville, "but such as may exist at court and amongst brothers of royal blood."

The cardinal did not think it necessary to wait for the sentence. He had arrived at his house at Lyons, in a sort of square chamber, covered with red damask, and borne on the shoulders of eighteen guards; there, stretched upon his couch, a table covered with papers beside him, he worked and chatted with whomsoever of his servants he had been pleased to have as his companion on the road. It was in the same equipage that he left Lyons to gain the Loire and return to Paris. On his passage, it was necessary to pull down lumps of wall and throw bridges over the fosses to make way for this vast litter and the indomitable man that lay dying within it.

It was on the 12th of September, 1642, that the accused appeared before the commission; there were now but two of them; the Duke of Bouillon had made his private arrangement with the cardinal, confessing everything, and requesting "to have his life spared in order that he might employ it to preserve to the Catholic church five little children whom his death would leave to persons of the opposite religion." In consideration of this pardon, a demand was made upon him to give up Sedan to the king, "though it were easy to gain possession of-it by investment." The duke consented to all, and he awaited in his dungeon at Pierre-Bncise the execution of his accomplices who had no town to surrender. Their death was to be the signal of his liberation.

The two accused denied nothing. M. de Thou merely maintained that he had not been in any way mixed up with the conspiracy, proving that he had blamed the treaty with Spain, and that his only crime was not having revealed it. "He believed me to be his friend, his one faithful friend," said he, speaking of Cinq-Mars, "and I had no mind to betray him." The grand equerry told in detail the story of the plot, his connection with the Duke of Orleans, who had missed no opportunity of paying court to him, the resolutions taken in concert with the Duke of Bouillon, and the treaty concluded with Spain, "confessing that he had erred, and had no hope but in the clemency of the king, and of the cardinal, whose generosity would be so much the more shown in asking pardon for him as he was the less bound to do so." There was not long to wait for the decree; the votes were unanimous against the grand equerry, a single one of the judges pronouncing in favor of M. de Thou. The latter turned towards Cinq-Mars, and said, "Ah! well, sir; humanly speaking, I might complain of you; you have placed me in the dock, and you are the cause of my death; but God knows how I love you. Let us die, sir, let us die courageously, and win Paradise."

The decree against Cinq-Mars sentenced him to undergo the question in order to get a more complete revelation of his accomplices. "It had been resolved not to put him to it," says Tallemant des Reaux: "but it was exhibited to him nevertheless; it gave him a turn, but it did not make him do anything to belie himself, and he was just taking off his doublet, when he was told to raise his hand in sign of telling the truth."

The execution was not destined to be long deferred; the very day on which the sentence was delivered saw the execution of it. "The grand equerry showed a never-changing and very resolute firmness to the death, together with admirable calmness and the constancy and devoutness of a Christian," wrote M. du Marca, councillor of state, to the secretary of state Brionne; and Tallemant des Reaux adds, "He died with astoundingly great courage, and did not waste time in speechifying; he would not have his eyes bandaged, and kept them open when the blow was struck." M. de Thou said not a word save to God, repeating the Credo even to the very scaffold, with a fervor of devotion that touched all present. "We have seen," says a report of the time, "the favorite of the greatest and most just of kings lose his head upon the scaffold at the age of twenty-two, but with a firmness which has scarcely its parallel in our histories. We have seen a councillor of state die like a saint after a crime which men cannot justly pardon. There is nobody in the world who, knowing of their conspiracy against the state, does not think them worthy of death, and there will be few who, having knowledge of their rank and their fine natural qualities, will not mourn their sad fate."



"Now that I make not a single step which does not lead me to death, I am more capable than anybody else of estimating the value of the things of the world," wrote Cinq-Mars to his mother, the wife of Marshal d'Effiat. "Enough of this world; away to Paradise!" said M. de Thou, as he marched to the scaffold. Chalais and Montmorency had used the same language. At the last hour, and at the bottom of their hearts, the frivolous courtier and the hare-brained conspirator, as well as the great soldier and the grave magistrate, had recovered their faith in God.



CHAPTER XXXIX.——LOUIS XIII., CARDINAL RICHELIEU, AND THE PROVINCES.

The story has been told of the conspiracies at court and the repeated checks suffered by the great lords in their attempts against Cardinal Richelieu. With the exception of Languedoc, under the influence of its governor the Duke of Montmorency, the provinces took no part in these enterprises; their opposition was of another sort; and it is amongst the parliaments chiefly that we must look for it.

"The king's cabinet and his bed-time business (petit coucher) cause me more embarrassment than the whole of Europe causes me," said the cardinal in the days of the great storms at court; he would often have had less trouble in managing the parliaments and the Parliament of Paris in particular, if the latter had not felt itself supported by a party at court. For a long time past a pretension had been put forward by that great body to give the king advice, and to replace towards him the vanished states-general. "We hold the place in council of the princes and barons, who from time immemorial were near the person of the kings," was the language used, in 1615, in the representations of the Parliament, which had dared, without the royal order, to summon the princes, dukes, peers, and officers of the crown to deliberate upon what was to be done for the service of the king, the good of the state, and the relief of the people.

This pretension on the part of the parliaments was what Cardinal Richelieu was continually fighting against. He would not allow the intervention of the magistrates in the government of the state. When he took the power into his hands, nine parliaments sat in France—Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Rouen, Aix, Rennes, and Pau: he created but one, that of Metz, in 1633, to severe in a definitive manner the bonds which still attached the three bishoprics to the Germanic empire. Trials at that time were carried in the last resort to Spires.

Throughout the history of France we find the Parliament of Paris bolder and more enterprising than all the rest: and it did not belie its character in the very teeth of Richelieu. When, after Dupes' Day was over, Louis XIII. declared all the companions of his brother's escape guilty of high treason, the Parliament of Dijon, to which the decree was presented by the king himself, enregistered it without making any difficulty. All the other parliaments followed the example; that of Paris alone resisted, and its decision on the 25th of April contained a bitter censure upon the cardinal's administration. On the 12th of May, the decision of that Parliament was quashed by a decree of the royal council, and all its members were summoned to the Louvre; on their knees they had to hear the severe reprimand delivered by Chateauneuf, keeper of the seals; and one president and three counsellors were at the same time dismissed. When the Parliament, still indomitable, would have had those magistrates sit in defiance of the royal order, they were not to be found in their houses; the soldiery had carried them off.



The trial of Marshal Marillac, before a commission, twice modified during the course of proceedings, of the Parliament of Dijon, was the occasion of a fresh reclamation on the part of the Parliament of Paris; and the king's ill-humor against the magistrates burst forth on the occasion of a commission constituted at the Arsenal to take cognizance of the crime of coining. The Parliament made some formal objections the king, who was at that time at Metz with his troops, summoned President Seguier and several counsellors. He quashed the decree of the Parliament. "You are only constituted," said he, "to judge between Master Peter and Master John (between John Doe and Richard Roe); if you go on as at present, I will pare your nails so close that you'll be sorry for it." Five counsellors were interdicted, and had great trouble in obtaining authority to sit again. So many and such frequent squabbles, whether about points of jurisdiction or about the registration of edicts respecting finances, which the Parliament claimed to have the right of looking into, caused between the king, inspired by his minister, and the Parliament of Paris an irritation which reached its height during the trial of the Duke of La Valette, third son of the Duke of Epernon, accused, not without grounds, of having caused the failure of the siege of Fontarabia from

jealousy towards the Prince of Conde. The affair was called on before a commission composed of dukes and peers, some councillors of state and some members of the Parliament, which demanded that the duke should be removed to its jurisdiction. "I will not have it," answered the king; "you are always making difficulties; it seems as if you wanted to keep me in leading-strings; but I am master, and shall know how to make myself obeyed: It is a gross error to suppose that I have not a right to bring to judgment whom I think proper and where I please." The king himself asked the judges for their opinion. [Isambert, Recueil des anciennes Lois Francaises, t. xvi.] "Sir," replied Counsellor Pinon, dean of the grand chamber, "for fifty years I have been in the Parliament, and I never saw anything of this sort; M. de La Valette had the honor of wedding a natural sister of your Majesty, and he is, besides, a peer of France; I implore you to remove him to the jurisdiction of the Parliament." "Your opinion!" said the king, curtly. "I am of opinion that the Duke of La Valette be removed to be tried before the Parliament." "I will not have that; it is no opinion." "Sir, removal is a legitimate opinion." "Your opinion on the case!" rejoined the king, who was beginning to be angry; "if not, I know what I must do." President Bellievre was even bolder. "It is a strange thing," said he to Louis XIII.'s face, to see a king giving his vote at the criminal trial of one of his subjects; hitherto kings have reserved to themselves the rights of grace, and have removed to their officers' province the sentencing of culprits. Could your Majesty bear to see in the dock a nobleman, who might leave your presence only for the scaffold? It is incompatible with kingly majesty." "Your opinion on the case!" bade the king. "Sir, I have no other opinion." The Duke of La Valette had taken refuge in England: he was condemned and executed in effigy. The attorney-general, Matthew Mold, "did not consider it his business to carry out an execution of that sort: "and recourse was obliged to be had to the lieutenant-governor of convicts at the Chatelet of Paris.

The cup had overflowed, and the cardinal resolved to put an end to an opposition which was the more irritating inasmuch as it was sometimes legitimate. A notification of the king's, published in 1641, prohibited the Parliament from any interference in affairs of state and administration. The whole of Richelieu's home-policy is summed up in the preamble to that instrument, a formal declaration of absolute power concentrated in the hands of the king. "It seemeth that, the institution of monarchies having its foundation in the government of a single one, that rank is as it were the soul which animates them and inspires them with as much force and vigor as they can have short of perfection. But as this absolute authority raises states to the highest pinnacle of their glory, so, when it happens to be enfeebled, they are observed, in a short time, to fall from their high estate. There is no need to go out of France to find instances of truth. . . . The fatal disorders and divisions of the League, which ought to be buried in eternal oblivion, owed their origin and growth to disregard of the kingly authority Henry the Great, in whom God had put the most excellent virtues of a great prince, on succeeding to the crown of Henry III., restored by his valor the kingly authority which had been as it were cast down and trampled under foot. France recovered her pristine vigor, and let all Europe see that power concentrated in the person of the sovereign is the source of the glory and greatness of monarchies, and the foundation upon which their preservation rests. . . . We, then, have thought it necessary to regulate the administration of justice, and to make known to our parliaments what is the legitimate usage of the authority which the kings, our predecessors, and we have deposited with them, in order that a thing which was established for the good of the people may not produce contrary effects, as would happen if the officers, instead of contenting themselves with that power which makes them judges in matters of life and death and touching the fortunes of our subjects, would fain meddle in the government of the state which appertains to the prince only."

The cardinal had gained the victory. Parliament bowed the head; its attempts at independence during the Fronde were but a flash, and the yoke of Louis XIV. became the more heavy for it. The pretensions of the magistrates were often foundationless, the restless and meddlesome character of their assemblies did harm to their remonstrances; but for a long while they maintained, in the teeth of more and more absolute kingly power, the country's rights in the government, and they had perceived the dangers of that sovereign monarchy which certainly sometimes raises states to the highest pinnacle of their glory, but only to let them sink before long to a condition of the most grievous abasement.

Though always first in the breach, the Parliament of Paris was not alone in its opposition to the cardinal. The Parliament of Dijon protested against the sentence of Marshal Marillac, and refused, to its shame, to bear its share of the expenses for the defence of Burgundy against the Duke of Lorraine, in 1636, a refusal which cost it the suspension of its premier president.

The Parliament of Brittany, in defence of its jurisdictional privileges, refused to enregister the decree which had for object the foundation of a company trading with the Indies, "for the general trade between the West and the East," a grand idea of Richelieu's, the seat of which was to be in the roads of Morbihan; the company, already formed, was disheartened, thanks to the delays caused by the Parliament, and the enterprise failed. The Parliament of Grenoble, fearing a dearth of corn in Dauphiny, quashed the treaties of supply for the army of Italy, at the time of the second expedition to Mantua; it went so far as to have the dealers' granaries thrown open, and the superintendent of finance, D'Emery, was obliged to come to terms with the deputies of Dauphiny, "in order that they of the Parliament of Grenoble, who said they had no interests but those of the province, might have no reason to prevent for the future the transport of corn," says Richelieu himself in his Memoires.

The Parliament of Rouen had always passed for one of the most recalcitrant. The province of Normandy was rich, and, consequently, overwhelmed with imposts; and several times the Parliament refused to enregister financial edicts which still further aggravated the distress of the people. In 1637 the king threatened to go in person to Rouen and bring the Parliament to submission, whereat it took fright and enregistered decrees for twenty-two millions. It was, no doubt, this augmentation of imposts that brought about the revolt of the Nu-pieds (Barefoots) in 1639. Before now, in 1624 and in 1637, in Perigord and Rouergue, two popular risings of the same sort, under the name of Croquants (Paupers), had disquieted the authorities, and the governor of the province had found some trouble in putting them down. The Nu-pieds were more numerous and more violent still; from Rouen to Avranches all the country was a-blaze. At Coutances and at Vire, several monopoliers and gabeleurs, as the fiscal officers were called, were massacred; a great number of houses were burned, and most of the receiving-offices were pulled down or pillaged. Everywhere the army of suffering (armee de souffrance), the name given by the revolters to themselves, made, appeal to violent passions; popular rhymes were circulated from hand to hand, in the name of General Nu-pieds (Barefoot), an imaginary personage whom nobody ever saw. Some of these verses are fair enough.



TO NORMANDY.

"Dear land of mine, thou canst no more What boots it to have served so well? For see! thy faithful service bore This bitter fruit—the cursed gabelle. Is that the guerdon earned by those Who succored France against her foes, Who saved her kings, upheld her crown, And raised the lilies trodden down, In spite of all the foe could do, In spite of Spain and England too?

"Recall thy generous blood, and show That all posterity may know— Duke William's breed still lives at need: Show that thou hast a heavier hand Than erst came forth from Northern land; A hand so strong, a heart so high, These tyrants all shall beaten cry, 'From Normans and the Norman race Deliver us, O God of grace!'"

The tumult was more violent at Rouen than anywhere else, and the Parliament energetically resisted the mob. It had sent two counsellors as a deputation to Paris to inform the king about the state of affairs. "You may signify to the gentlemen of the Parliament of Rouen," said Chancellor Seguier, in answer to the delegates, "that I thank them for the trouble they have taken on this occasion; I will let the king know how they have behaved in this affair. I beg them to go on as they have begun. I know that the Parliament did very good service there."

In fact, several counsellors, on foot in the street and in the very midst of the revolters, had, at the peril of their lives, defended Le Tellier de Tourneville, receiver-general of gabels, and his officers, whilst the whole Parliament, in their robes, with the premier president at their head, perambulated Rouen, amidst the angry mob, repairing at once to the points most threatened, insomuch that the presidents and counsellors were "in great danger and fear for their skins." [Histoire du Parlement de Normandy, by M. Floquet, t. iv.] It was this terror, born of tumults and the sight of an infuriated populace, which, at a later period, retarded the Parliament in dealing out justice, and brought down upon it the wrath of the king and of the cardinal.

Meanwhile the insurrection was gaining ground, and the local authorities were powerless to repress it. There was hesitation at the king's council in choosing between Marshal Rantzau and M. de Gassion to command the forces ordered to march into Normandy. "That country yields no wine," said the king "that will not do for Rantzau, or be good quarters for him." And they sent Colonel Gnssion, not so heavy a drinker as Rantzau, a good soldier and an inflexible character. First at Caen, then at Avranches, where there was fighting to be done, at Coutances and at Elbeuf, Gassion's soldiery everywhere left the country behind them in subjection, in ruin, and in despair. They entered Rouen on the 31st of December, 1639, and on the 2d of January, 1640, the chancellor himself arrived to do justice on the rebels heaped up in the prisons, whom the Parliament dared not bring up for judgment. "I come to Rouen," he said, on entering the town, "not to deliberate, but to declare and execute the matters on which my mind is made up." And he forbade all intervention on the part of the archbishop, Francis de Harlay, who was disposed, in accordance with his office of love as well as the parliamentary name he bore, to implore pity for the culprits, and to excuse the backward judges. The chancellor did not give himself the trouble to draw up sentences. "The decree is at the tip of my staff," replied Picot, captain of his guards, when he was asked to show his orders. The executions were numerous in Higher and Lower Normandy, and the Parliament received the wages of its tardiness. All the members of the body, even the most aged and infirm, were obliged to leave Rouen. A commission of fifteen councillors of the Parliament of Paris came to replace provisionally the interdicted Parliament of Normandy; and, when the magistrates were empowered at last to resume their sitting, it was only a six months' term: that is, the Parliament henceforth found itself divided into two fragments, perfect strangers one to the other, which were to sit alternately for six months. "A veritable thunderbolt for that sovereign court, for by the six months' term," says M. Floquet, "there was no longer any Parliament, properly speaking, but two phantoms of Parliament, making war on each other, whilst the government had the field open to carve and cut without control."

"All obedience is now from fear," wrote Grotius to Oxenstiern, chancellor of Sweden; "the idea is to exorcise and annihilate hatred by means of terror." "This year," wrote an inhabitant of Rouen, "there have been no New Year's presents [etrennes], no singing of 'the king's drinking-song [le roi boit], in any house. Little children will be able to tell tales of it when they have attained to man's estate; for never, these fifty years past, so far as I can learn, has it been so." [Journal de l'Abbe de la Rue.] The heaviest imposts weighed upon the whole province, which thus expiated the crime of an insignificant portion of its inhabitants. "The king shall not lose the value of this handkerchief that I hold," said the superintendent Bullion, on arriving at Rouen. And he kept his word: Rouen alone had to pay more than three millions. The province and its Parliament were henceforth reduced to submission.

It was not only the Parliaments that resisted the efforts of Cardinal Richelieu to concentrate all the power of the government in the hands of the king. From the time that the sovereigns had given up convoking the states-general, the states-provincial had alone preserved the right of bringing to the foot of the throne the plaints and petitions of subjects. Unhappily few provinces enjoyed this privilege; Languedoc, Brittany, Burgundy, Provence, Dauphiny, and the countship of Pau alone were states-districts, that is to say, allowed to tax themselves independently and govern themselves to a certain extent. Normandy, though an elections-district, and, as such, subject to the royal agents in respect of finance, had states which continued to meet even in 1666. The states-provincial were always convoked by the king, who fixed the place and duration of assembly.

The composition of the states-provincial varied a great deal, according to the districts. In Brittany all noblemen settled in the province had the right of sitting, whilst the third estate were represented by only forty deputies. In Languedoc, on the contrary, the nobility had but twenty-three representatives, and the class of the third estate numbered sixty-eight deputies. Hence, no doubt, the divergences of conduct to be remarked in those two provinces between the Parliament and the states-provincial. In Languedoc, even during Montmorency's insurrection, the Parliament remained faithful to the king and submissive to the cardinal, whilst the states declared in favor of the revolt: in Brittany, the Parliament thwarted Richelieu's efforts in favor of trade, which had been enthusiastically welcomed by the states.

In Languedoc as well as in Dauphiny the cardinal's energy was constantly directed towards reducing the privileges which put the imposts, and, consequently, the royal revenues, at the discretion of the states. Montmorency's insurrection cost Languedoc a great portion of its liberties, which had already been jeoparded, in 1629, on the occasion of the Huguenots' rising; and those of Dauphiny were completely lost; the states were suppressed in 1628.

The states of Burgundy ordinarily assembled every three years, but they were accustomed, on separating, to appoint "a chamber of states-general," whereat the nobility, clergy, and third estate were represented, and which was charged to watch over the interests of the province in the interval between the sessions. When, in 1629, Richelieu proposed to create, as in Languedoc, a body of "elect" to arrange with the fiscal agents for the rating of imposts without the concurrence of the states, the assembly proclaimed that "it was all over with the liberties of the province if the edict passed," and, in the chamber of the nobility, two gentlemen were observed to draw their swords. But, spite of the disturbance which took place at Dijon, in 1630, on occasion of an impost on wines, and which was called, from the title of a popular ditty, la Sedition de Lanturlu, the province preserved its liberties, and remained a states-district.

It was the same subject that excited in Provence the revolt of the Cascaveous, or bell-bearers. Whenever there was any question of elections or "elect," the conspirators sounded their bells as a rallying signal, and so numerous was the body of adherents that the bells were heard tinkling everywhere. The Prince of Conde was obliged to march against the revolters, and the states assembled at Tarascon found themselves forced to vote a subsidy of one million five hundred thousand livres. At this cost the privileges of Provence were respected.

The states of Brittany, on the contrary, lent the cardinal faithful support, when he repaired thither with the king, in 1626, at the time of the conspiracy of Chalais; the Duke of Vendome, governor of Brittany, had just been arrested; the states requested the king "never to give them a governor issue of the old dukes, and to destroy the fortifications of the towns and castles which were of no use for the defence of the country." The petty noblemen, a majority in the states, thus delivered over the province to the kingly power, from jealousy of the great lords. The ordinance, dated from Nantes on the 31st of July, 1626, rendered the measure general throughout France. The battlements of the castles fell beneath the axe of the demolishers, and the masses of the district welcomed enthusiastically the downfall of those old reminiscences of feudal oppression.

As a sequel to the systematic humiliation of the great lords, even when provincial governors, and to the gradual enfeeblement of provincial institutions, Richelieu had to create in all parts of France, still so diverse in organization as well as in manners, representatives of the kingly power, of too modest and feeble a type to do without him, but capable of applying his measures and making his wishes respected. Before now the kings of France had several times over perceived the necessity of keeping up a supervision over the conduct of their officers in the provinces. The inquisitors (enquesteurs) of St. Louis, the ridings of the revising-masters (chevauehees des maitres des requetes), the departmental commissioners (commissaires departis) of Charles IX., were so many temporary and travelling inspectors, whose duty it was to inform the king of the state of affairs throughout the kingdom. Richelieu substituted for these shifting commissions a fixed and regular institution, and in 1637 he established in all the provinces overseers of justice, police, and finance, who were chosen for the most part from amongst the burgesses, and who before long concentrated in their hands the whole administration, and maintained the struggle of the kingly power against the governors, the sovereign courts, and the states-provincial.

At the time when the overseers of provinces were instituted, the battle of pure monarchy was gained; Richelieu had no further need of allies, he wanted mere subjects; but at the beginning of his ministry he had felt the need of throwing himself sometimes for support on the nation, and this great foe of the states-general had twice convoked the Assembly of Notables. The first took place at Fontainebleau, in 1625-6. The cardinal was at that time at loggerheads with the court of Rome: "If the Most Christian King," said he, "is bound to watch over the interests of the Catholic church, he has first of all to maintain his own reputation in the world. What use would it be for a state to have power, riches, and popular government, if it had not character enough to bring other people to form alliance with it?" These few words summed up the great minister's foreign policy, to protect the Catholic church whilst keeping up Protestant alliances. The Notables understood the wisdom of this conduct, and Richelieu received their adhesion. It was just the same the following year, the day after the conspiracy of Chalais; the cardinal convoked the Assembly of Notables. "We do protest before the living God," said the letters of convocation, "that we have no other aim and intention but His honor and the welfare of our subjects; that is why we do conjure in His name those whom we convoke, and do most expressly command them, without fear or desire of displeasing or pleasing any, to give us, in all frankness and sincerity, the counsels they shall judge on their consciences to be the most salutary and convenient for the welfare of the commonwealth." The assembly so solemnly convoked opened its sittings at the palace of the Tuileries on the 2d of December, 1626. The state of the finances was what chiefly occupied those present; and the cardinal himself pointed out the general principles of the reform he calculated upon establishing. "It is impossible," he said, "to meddle with the expenses necessary for the preservation of the state; it were a crime to think of such a thing. The retrenchment, therefore, must be in the case of useless expenses. The most stringent rules are and appear to be, even to the most ill-regulated minds, comparatively mild, when they have, in deed as well as in appearance, no object but the public good and the safety of the state. To restore the state to its pristine splendor, we need not many ordinances, but a great deal of practical performance."

The performance appertained to Richelieu, and he readily dispensed with many ordinances. The Assembly was favorable to his measures; but amongst those that it rejected was the proposal to substitute loss of offices and confiscation for the penalty of death in matters of rebellion and conspiracy. "Better a moderate but certain penalty," said the cardinal, "than a punishment too severe to be always inflicted." It was the notables who preserved in the hands of the inflexible minister the terrible weapon of which he availed himself so often. The Assembly separated on the 24th of February, 1627, the last that was convoked before the revolution of 1789. It was in answer to its demands, as well as to those of the states of 1614, that the keeper of the seals, Michael Marillac, drew up, in 1629, the important administrative ordinance which has preserved from its author's name the title of Code Michau.

The cardinal had propounded to the Notables a question which he had greatly at heart—the foundation of a navy. Already, when disposing, some weeks previously, of the government of Brittany, which had been taken away from the Duke of Vendome, he had separated from the office that of admiral of Brittany; already he was in a position to purchase from M. de Montmorency his office of grand admiral of France, so as to suppress it and substitute for it that of grand master of navigation, which was personally conferred upon Richelieu by an edict enregistered on the 18th of March, 1627 .

"Of the power which it has seemed agreeable to his Majesty that I should hold," he wrote on the 20th of January, 1627, "I can say with truth, that it is so moderate that it could not be more so to be an appreciable service, seeing that I have desired no wage or salary so as not to be a charge to the state, and I can add without vanity that the proposal to take no wage came from me, and that his Majesty made a difficulty about letting it be so."

The Notables had thanked the king, for the intention he had "of being pleased to give the kingdom the treasures of the sea which nature had so liberally proffered it, for without [keeping] the sea one cannot profit by the sea nor maintain war." Harbors repaired and fortified, arsenals established at various points on the coast, organization of marine regiments, foundation of pilot-schools, in fact, the creation of a powerful marine which, in 1642, numbered sixty-three vessels and twenty-two galleys, that left the roads of Barcelona after the rejoicings for the capture of Perpignan and arrived the same evening at Toulon—such were the fruits of Richelieu's administration of naval affairs. "Instead," said the bailiff of Forbin, "of having a handful of rebels forcing us, as of late, to compose our naval forces of foreigners and implore succor from Spain, England, Malta, and Holland, we are at present in a condition to do as much for them if they continue in alliance with us, or to beat them when they fall off from us."

So much progress on every point, so many efforts in all directions, eighty-five vessels afloat, a hundred regiments of infantry, and three hundred troops of cavalry, almost constantly on a war footing, naturally entailed enormous expenses and terrible burdens on the people. It was Richelieu's great fault to be more concerned about his object than scrupulous as to the means he employed for arriving at it. His principles were as harsh as his conduct. "Reason does not admit of exempting the people from all burdens," said he, "because in such case, on losing the mark of their subjection, they would also lose remembrance of their condition, and, if they were free from tribute, would think that they were from obedience also." Cruel words those, and singularly destitute of regard for Christian charity and human dignity, beside which, however, must be placed these: "If the subsidies imposed on the people were not to be kept within moderate bounds, even when they were needed for the service of the country, they would not cease to be unjust." The strong common sense of this great mind did not allow him to depart for long from a certain hard equity. Posterity has preserved the memory of his equity less than of his hardness: men want sympathy more than justice.



CHAPTER XL.——LOUIS XIII., CARDINAL RICHELIEU, THE CATHOLICS AND THE PROTESTANTS.

Cardinal Richelieu has often been accused of indifference towards the Catholic church; the ultramontanes called him the Huguenots' cardinal; in so speaking there was either a mistake or a desire to mislead; Richelieu was all his life profoundly and sincerely Catholic; not only did no doubt as to the fundamental doctrines of his church trouble his mind, but he also gave his mind to her security and her aggrandizement. He was a believer on conviction, without religious emotions and without the mystic's zeal; he labored for Catholicism whilst securing for himself Protestant alliances, and if the independence of his mind caused him to feel the necessity for a reformation, it was still in the church and by the church that he would have had it accomplished.

Spirits more fervent and minds more pious than Richelieu's felt the same need. On emerging from the violent struggles of the religious wars, the Catholic church had not lost her faith, but she had neglected sweetness and light. King Henry IV.'s conversion had secured to her the victory in France, but she was threatened with letting it escape from her hands by her own fault. God raised up for her some great servents who preserved her from this danger.

The oratorical and political brilliancy of the Catholic church in the reign of Louis XIV. has caused men to forget the great religious movement in the reign of Louis XIII. Learned and mystic in the hands of Cardinal Berulle, humane and charitable with St. Vincent de Paul, bold and saintly with M. de Saint Cyran, the church underwent from all quarters quickening influences which roused her from her dangerous lethargy.

The effort was attempted at all points at once. The priests had sunk into an ignorance as perilous as their lukewarmness. Mid all the diplomatic negotiations which he undertook in Richelieu's name, and the intrigues he, with the queen-mother, often hatched against him, Cardinal Berulle founded the con gregation of the Oratory, designed to train up well-informed and pious young priests with a capacity for devoting themselves to the education of children as well as the edification of the people. " It is a body," said Bossizet, " in which everybody obeys and nobody commands." No vow fettered the members of this celebrated congregation, which gave to the world Malebranche and Massillon. It was, again, under the inspiration of Cardinal B6rulle, renowned for the pious direction of souls, that the order of Carmelites, hitherto confined to Spain, was founded in France. The convent in Rue St. Jacques soon numbered amongst its penitents women of the highest rank.

The labors of Mgr. de Berulle tended especially to the salvation of individual souls; those of St. Vincent de Paul embraced a vaster field, and one offering more scope to Christian humanity. Some time before, in 1610, St. Francis de Sales had founded, under the direction of Madame de Chantal, the order of Visitation, whose duty was the care of the sick and poor; he had left the direction of his new institution to M. Vincent, as was at that time the appellation of the poor priest without birth and without fortune, who was one day to be celebrated throughout the world under the name of St. Vincent de Paul. This direction was not enough to satisfy his zeal for charity; children and sick, the ignorant and the convict, all those who suffered in body or spirit, seemed to summon M. Vincent to their aid; he founded in 1617, in a small parish of Bresse, the charitable society of Servants of the poor, which became in 1633, at Paris, under the direction of Madame Legras, niece of the keeper of the seals Marillac, the sisterhood off Servants of the sick poor, and the cradle of the Sisters of Charity. "They shall not have, as a regular rule," said St. Vincent, "any monastery but the houses of the sick, any chapel but their parish-church, any cloister but the streets of the town and the rooms of the hospitals, any enclosure but obedience, any grating but the fear of God, or any veil but the holiest and most perfect modesty." Eighteen thousand daughters of St. Vincent de Paul, of whom fourteen thousand are French, still testify at this day to the far-sighted wisdom of their founder; his regulations have endured like his work and the necessities of the poor.

It was to the daughters of Charity that M. Vincent confided the work in connection with foundlings, when his charitable impulses led him, in 1638, to take up the cause of the poor little abandoned things who were perishing by heaps at that time in Paris. Appealing for help, on their account, to the women of the world, one evening when he was in want of money, he exclaimed at the house of the Duchess of Aiguillon, Cardinal Richelieu's niece, "Come now, ladies; compassion and charity have made you adopt these, little creatures as your own children; you have been their mothers according to grace, since their mothers according to nature have abandoned them. Consider, then, whether you too will abandon them; their life and their death are in your hands; it is time to pronounce their sentence, and know whether you will any longer have pity upon them. They will live if you continue to take a charitable care of them; they will die and perish infallibly if you abandon them." St. Vincent de Paul had confidence in human nature, and everywhere on his path sprang up good works in response to his appeals; the foundation of Mission-priests or Lazarists, designed originally to spread about in the rural districts the knowledge of God, still testifies in the East, whither they carry at one and the same time the Gospel and the name of France, to that great awakening of Christian charity which signalized the reign of Louis XIII. The same inspiration created the seminary of St. Sulpice, by means of M. Olier's solicitude, the brethren of Christian Doctrine and the Ursulines, devoted to the education of childhood, and so many other charitable or pious establishments, noble fruits of devoutness and Christian sacrifice.

Nowhere was this fructuating idea of the sacrifice, the immolation of man for God and of the present in prospect of eternity, more rigorously understood and practised than amongst the disciples of John du Vergier de Hauranne, Abbot of St. Cyran. More bold in his conceptions than Cardinal Berulle and St. Vincent de Paul, of a nature more austere and at the same time more ardent, he had early devoted himself to the study of theology. Connected in his youth with a Fleming, Jansen, known under the name of Jansenius and afterwards created Bishop of Ypres, he adopted with fervor the doctrines as to the grace of God which his friend had imbibed in the school of St. Augustin, and employing in the direction of souls that zealous ardor which makes conquerors, he set himself to work to regenerate the church by penance, sanctity, and sacrifice; God supreme, reigning over hearts subdued, that was his ultimate object, and he marched towards it without troubling himself about revolts and sufferings, certain that he would be triumphant with God and for Him.



Victories gained over souls are from their very nature of a silent sort: but M. de St. Cyran was not content with them. He wrote also, and his book "Petrus Aurelius," published under the veil of the anonymous, excited a great stir by its defence of the rights of the bishops against the monks, and even against the pope. The Gallican bishops welcomed at that time with lively satisfaction, its eloquent pleadings in favor of their cause. But, at a later period, the French clergy discovered in St. Cyran's book free-thinking concealed under dogmatic forms. "In case of heresy any Christian may become judge," said Petrus Aurelius. Who, then, should be commissioned to define heresy? So M. de St. Cyran was condemned.

He had been already by an enemy more formidable than the assemblies of the clergy of France. Cardinal Richelieu, naturally attracted towards greatness as he was at a later period towards the infant prodigy of the Pascals, had been desirous of attaching St. Cyran to himself. "Gentlemen," said he one day, as he led back the simple priest into the midst of a throng of his courtiers, "here you see the most learned man in Europe." But the Abbot of St. Cyran would accept no yoke but God's: he remained independent, and perhaps hostile, pursuing, without troubling himself about the cardinal, the great task he had undertaken. Having had, for two years past, the spiritual direction of the convent of Port Royal, he had found in Mother Angelica Arnauld, the superior and reformer of the monastery, in her sister, Mother Agnes, and in the nuns of their order, souls worthy of him and capable of tolerating his austere instructions.

Before long he had seen forming, beside Port Royal and in the solitude of the fields, a nucleus of penitents, emulous of the hermits of the desert. M. Le Maitre, Mother Angelica's nephew, a celebrated advocate in the Parliament of Paris, had quitted all "to have no speech but with God." A howling (rugissant) penitent, he had drawn after him his brothers, MM. de Sacy and de Sericourt, and, ere long, young Lancelot, the learned author of Greek roots: all steeped in the rigors of penitential life, all blindly submissive to M. de St. Cyran and his saintly requirements. The director's power over so many eminent minds became too great. Richelieu had comprehended better than the bishops the tendency of M. de St. Cyran's ideas and writings. "He continued to publish many opinions, new and leading to dangerous conclusions," says Father Joseph in his Memoires," in such sort that the king, being advertised, commanded him to be kept a prisoner in the Bois de Vincennes." "That man is worse than six armies," said Cardinal Richelieu; "if Luther and, Calvin had been shut up when they began to dogmatize, states would have been spared a great deal of trouble."

The consciences of men and the ardor of their souls are not so easily stifled by prison or exile. The Abbot of St. Cyran, in spite of the entreaties of his powerful friends, remained at Vincennes up to the death of Cardinal Richelieu; the seclusionists of Port Royal were driven from their retreat and obliged to disperse; but neither the severities of Richelieu, nor, at a later period, those of Louis XIV., were the true cause of the ultimate powerlessness of Jansenism to bring about that profound reformation of the church which had been the dream of the Abbot of St. Cyran. He had wished to immolate sinful man to God, and he regarded sanctity as the complete sacrifice of human nature corrupt to its innermost core. Human conscience could not accept this cruel yoke; its liberty revolted against so narrow a prison; and the Protestant reformation, with a doctrine as austere as that of M. de St. Cyran, but more true and more simple in its practical application, offered strong minds the satisfaction of direct and personal relations between God and man; it saw the way to satisfy them without crushing them; and that is why the kingly power in France succeeded in stifling Jansenism without having ever been able to destroy the Protestant faith.

Cardinal Richelieu dreaded the doctrines of M. de St. Cyran, and still more those of the reformation, which went directly to the emancipation of souls; but he had the wit to resist ecclesiastical encroachments, and, for all his being a cardinal, never did minister maintain more openly the independence of the civil power. "The king, in things temporal, recognizes no sovereign save God." That had always been the theory of the Gallican church. "The church of France is in the kingdom, and not the kingdom in the church," said the jurisconsult Loyseau, thus subjecting ecclesiastics to the common law of all citizens.

The French clergy did not understand it so; they had recourse to the liberties of the Gallican church in order to keep up a certain measure of independence as regarded Rome, but they would not give up their ancient privileges, and especially the right of taking an independent share in the public necessities without being taxed as a matter of law and obligation. Here it was that Cardinal Richelieu withstood them: he maintained that, the ecclesiastics and the brotherhoods not having the right to hold property in France by mortmain, the king tolerated their possession, of his grace, but he exacted the payment of seignorial dues. The clergy at that time possessed more than a quarter of the property in France; the tax to be paid amounted, it is said, to eighty millions. The subsidies further demanded reached a total of eight millions six hundred livres.

The clergy in dismay wished to convoke an assembly to determine their conduct; and after a great deal of difficulty it was authorized by the cardinal. Before long he intimated to the five prelates who were most hostile to him that they must quit the assembly and retire to their dioceses. "There are," said the Bishop of Autun, who was entirely devoted to Richelieu, "some who show great delicacy about agreeing to all that the king demands, as if they had a doubt whether all the property of the church belonged to him or not, and whether his Majesty, leaving the ecclesiastics wherewithal to provide for their subsistence and a moderate establishment, could not take all the surplus." That sort of doctrine would never do for the clergy; still they consented to pay five millions and a half, the sum to which the minister lowered his pretensions. "The wants of the state," said Richelieu, "are real; those of the church are fanciful and arbitrary; if the king's armies had not repulsed the enemy, the clergy would have suffered far more."

Whilst the cardinal imposed upon the French clergy the obligations common to all subjects, he defended the kingly power and majesty against the Ultramoutanes, and especially against the Jesuits. Several of their pamphlets had already been censured by his order when Father Sanctarel published a treatise on heresy and schism, clothed with the pope's approbation, and containing, amongst other dangerous propositions, the following: "The pope can depose emperor and kings for their iniquities or for personal incompetence, seeing that he has a sovereign, supreme, and absolute power." The work was referred to the Parliament, who ordered it to be burned in Place de Greve; there was talk of nothing less than the banishment of the entire order.

Father Cotton, superior of the French Jesuits, was summoned to appear before the council; he gave up Father Sanctarel unreservedly, making what excuse he best could for the approbation of the pope and of the general of the Jesuits. The condemnation of the work was demanded, and it was signed by sixteen French fathers. The Parliament was disposed to push the matter farther, when Richelieu, always as prudent as he was firm in his relations with this celebrated order, represented to the king that there are "certain abuses which are more easily put down by passing them over than by resolving to destroy them openly, and that it was time to take care lest proceedings should be carried to a point which might be as prejudicial to his service as past action had been serviceable to it." The Jesuits remained in France, and their college at Clermont was not closed; but they published no more pamphlets against the cardinal. They even defended him at need.

Richelieu's grand quarrel with the clergy was nearing its end when the climax was reached of a disagreement with the court of Rome, dating from some time back. The pope had never forgiven the cardinal for not having accepted his mediation in the affair with Spain on the subject of the Valteline; he would not accede to the desire which Richelieu manifested to become legate of the Holy See in France, as Cardinal d'Amboise had been; and when Marshal d'Estrees arrived as ambassador at Rome, his resolute behavior brought the misunderstanding to a head: the pope refused the customary funeral honors to Cardinal La Valette, who had died in battle, without dispensation, at the head of the king's army in Piedmont. Richelieu preserved appearances no longer; the king refused to receive the pope's nuncio, and prohibited the bishops from any communication with him. The quarrel was envenomed by a pamphlet called Optatus Gallus. The cardinal's enemies represented him as a new Luther ready to excite a schism and found a patriarchate in France. Father Rabardeau, of the Jesuits' order, maintained, in reply, that the act would not be schismatical, and that the consent of Rome would be no more necessary to create a patriarchate in France than it had been to establish those of Constantinople and Jerusalem.

Urban VIII. took fright; he sent to France Julius Mazarin, at that time vice-legate, and already frequently employed in the negotiations between the court of Rome and Cardinal Richelieu, who had taken a great fancy to him. The French clergy had just obtained authority to vote the subsidy in an assembly; and the pope contented himself with this feeble concession. Mazarin put the finishing touch to the reconciliation, and received as recompense the cardinal's hat. In fact, the victory of the civil power was complete, and the independence of the crown clearly established. "His Holiness," said the cardinal, "ought to commend the zeal shown by his Majesty for the welfare of the church, and to remain satisfied with the respect shown him by an appeal to his authority which his Majesty might have dispensed with in this matter, having his Parliaments to fall back upon for the chastisement of those who lived evilly in his kingdom." In principle, the supreme question between the court of Rome and the kingly power remained undecided, and it showed wisdom on the part of Urban VIII., as well as of Cardinal Richelieu, never to fix fundamentally and within their exact limits the rights and pretensions of the church or the crown.

Cardinal Richelieu had another battle to deliver, and another victory, which was to be more decisive, to gain. During his exile at Avignon, he had written against the Reformers, violently attacking their doctrines and their precepts; he was, therefore, personally engaged in the theological strife, and more hotly than has been made out; but he was above everything a great politician, and the rebellion of the Reformers, their irregular political assemblies, their alliances with the foreigner, occupied him, far more than their ministers' preaching. It was state within state that the reformers were seeking to found, and that the cardinal wished to upset. Seconded by the Prince of Conde, the king had put an end to the war which cost the life of the constable De Luynes, but the peace concluded at Montpellier on the 19th of November, 1622, had already received many a blow; pacific counsels amongst the Reformers were little by little dying out together with the old servants of Henry IV.; Du Plessis-Mornay had lately died (November 11, 1623) at his castle of Foret-sur-Sevres, and the direction of the party fell entirely into the hands of the Duke of Rohan, a fiery temper and soured by misfortunes as well as by continual efforts made on the part of his brother, the Duke of Soubise, more restless and less earnest than he. Hostilities broke out afresh at the beginning of the year 1625. The Reformers complained that, instead of demolishing Fort Louis, which commanded La Rochelle, all haste was being made to complete the ramparts they had hoped to see razed to the ground: a small royal fleet mustered quietly at Le Blavet, and threatened to close the sea against the Rochellese. The peace of Montpellier had left the Protestants only two surety-places, Montauban and La Rochelle; and they clung to them with desperation. On the 6th of January, 1625, Soubise suddenly entered the harbor of Le Blavet with twelve vessels, and seizing without a blow the royal ships, towed them off in triumph to La Rochelle—a fatal success, which was to cost that town dear.