queen

him to the notice of Concini, who introduced him to the mother. The person and manners of the young prelate gained her heart, and she appointed him high almoner to Anne of Austria, the bride of Louis XIII., and, in 1616, secretary of

state.

During his brief period of office he conciliated all parties. After the death of Concini the king intimated to him that he did not count him among the evil counsellors of the late minister. The new favourite de Luynes held a similar language. But the time was past for Richelieu to occupy a subordinate position, and he resolved to withdraw till he could be a master.

The two following years he spent in retirement at Avignon; meditating, we may believe, the gigantic projects which he lived just long enough to accomplish.

In 1619 he was recalled to effect a reconciliation between the king and his mother; and, to reward his services, Marie de Medicis asked for him the cardinal's hat. He obtained it in 1622.

For a few years Richelieu was devoted to his benefactress, and we trace his influence in the unusual wisdom of her advice to the young king. The council, however, was still governed by Luynes, and after his death by Brulart de Puisieux. He was turned out in 1624 by La Vieuville, who, to win the favour of the queen-mother, introduced Richelieu into the council, after a feigned resistance on the part of the cardinal, and a real reluctance on that of the king. In six months La Vieuville was in prison, and Richelieu reigned supreme.

A total change took place in his demeanour. The subtle and insinuating courtier became the uncompromising statesman, scorning remonstrance and punishing opposition. Louis XIII. was captivated by the prospect of glory opened before him. He had at last found a minister strong enough to hold the sceptre which fatigued his feeble hand.

Protestant alliances were formed. The marriage of Madame Henriette-Marie and Charles I. was concluded, and an army sent into the Valtelines to check the pope and the House of Austria.

The revolt of the Huguenots in 1625 interrupted Richelieu's foreign policy. A long civil war ensued, which terminated in the celebrated siege of La Rochelle. The capture of this, their principal stronghold, in 1628, for ever crushed the Protestants as a political party.

The hands of Richelieu were now free to pursue the war in Italy; and amidst the frost and snow of the early spring of 1629, he and the king crossed the Alps at the head of their army, took Susa, imposed a French alliance on the Duke of Savoy, and drove the Spaniards out of Casale.

Louis XIII. had courage, but not perseverance. He had soon become tired of the siege of Rochelle; he was now equally weary of the campaign in Italy. In spite of the representations of Richelieu, he left Susa on the 28th of April, and proceeded to extinguish the dying embers of the Huguenot rebellion in Provence.

The cardinal joined him on the 19th of May, but a severe attack of illness confined him to his bed; and Louis indulged himself in slaughtering his own subjects, and burning his own towns. A lasting peace was finally settled on the 28th of June 1629. The Huguenots were required to lay down their arms, to swear allegiance, to raze their fortifications, and to reëstablish the Roman Catholic ritual; but they were allowed the free exercise of their religion.

It was not enough for Marie de Medici that she retained her seat in the council, and that she had been regent during the absence of the king: she could not forgive Richelieu's independence or his growing indifference. She detested his policy, and she reproached him with his heretical alliances abroad, and his ingratitude towards herself. A violent quarrel was the result, which ended in his dismissal from the office of comptroller of her household. On this the king wrote with his own hand the patent which appointed Richelieu prime minister, leaving a blank for the salary to be filled up by the cardinal himself.

He was already high admiral, under the title of Superintendent of Navigation. The strong places of the Calvinists were delivered into his hands. Saumur, Angers, Honfleur, Oléron, and the Ile de Ré were his. A guard of honour attended him, and his magnificence exceeded that of the king. His presence was again required in Italy. The troops of the emperor were besieging the capital of his ally the Duke of Mantua. Richelieu once more exchanged the robes of peace for the sword and buckler, the buff jerkin, and the cocked hat and red plume, in which he has been so often described. He was generalissimo of the army two marshals of France were under his orders, and the same honours and obedience were paid to him as to the king himself.

In two days he became master of Pignerol and Chambéri. On the 10th of May 1630 the king and his minister met at Grenoble. They marched together upon Savoy, and in less than a month subdued the whole country. Still Mantua was not relieved, the pass of Susa was once more in the hands of the enemy, and Richelieu felt that the campaign had failed in its real object. The queens loudly demanded peace; but Richelieu persuaded the king to attempt another descent upon Italy. Louis XIII. did not get beyond St. Jean de Maurienne.

In the beginning of September, illness forced him to return to Lyons. The struggle that followed between the queens and Richelieu forms one of the first pictures in M. Michelet's volume.

When the king reached Lyons, he became so seriously ill that his decease was hourly expected. As usual, the surgeons aggravated the evil by their barbarous remedies. In the faces of all around he read nothing but anxiety for the moment of his death. He hardly dared to taste either food or medicine for fear of poison. Yet, except for the pleasure of cheating his enemies, he could hardly wish for a longer life. There never was a more melancholy one. Gloomy, suspicious, and taciturn, he was in all respects the opposite to his father, the gay and genial Henri IV.*

In his domestic relations he was most unhappy. His mother, Marie de Medicis, preferred to him his brother, the clever and profligate Gaston; and tried, not without success, to alienate his wife.

Anne of Austria was quite ready to love her young husband. "Sa beauté brune ne déplaisait pas à la jeune reine," says Mme. de Motteville; and when for a short time she suspected him of a partiality for the Connétable de Luynes (afterwards Mme. de Chevreuse), she fell ill with jealousy and vexation. After a time, however, stung by his coldness and neglect, surrounded with bad companions, she gave at least an excuse for his suspicions. He felt his own unfitness for government. He had neither scientific nor literary pursuits. Out of doors he lived with horses and dogs; in doors he was persecuted by ennui. He frequently asked one of the courtiers to sit with him at a window, "et puis ennuyons-nous, ennuyons-nous;" and he soon succeeded. He tried to kill the time by all sorts of trifling manual employments. He made locks, he preserved fruits, and he took lessons from his cook in larding.

His religion partook of the gloom of his character. He rejoiced in the sufferings of the Huguenots; and at the siege of Montauban, from the windows of the castle he watched the struggles of the wounded, left to die in the dry moat. He amused himself for hours in mimicking their contortions. And yet he was not without good and great qualities. In an age of almost unbridled license, his moral conduct was pure. His choice of ministers was conscientious. When, at length, he fell under the dominion of Richelieu, his sole motive was the welfare of France. Although, when viewed from a distance either of space or of time, by surrounding nations or by pos

M. Michelet throws some doubt upon his legitimacy, as he does upon that of most of his characters. Our own James I. he asserts to have been the son of Rizzio.

E

terity, the great statesman appeared to his contemporaries, and appears to us, omnipotent, his tenure of office did not depend on the affection or on the fear of his sovereign. He was neither a favourite nor a master.

During the king's illness at Lyons, the two queens, one of whom hated Richelieu for having begun to make love to her, and the other for having left off, extorted from Louis a promise to dismiss their common enemy. When the cardinal returned to Lyons to wear the laurels which he had well earned in his victorious campaign, his situation was nearly desperate. The French envoys had taken advantage of the king's illness, and of Richelieu's absence, to sign, without authority, the Peace of Ratisbon. The emissaries of Gaston, whom he had always persecuted, filled the town, eager to clutch the crown from the brows of the dying monarch. Whether the king lived or died, Richelieu seemed lost. By a miracle the king recovered. At this moment the queens introduced a new character upon the stage.

Louis XIII. had always some reigning favourite some very young man, whom he undertook to bring up in the way in which he should go; but till now he had appeared to be insensible to the charms of female beauty.

"Still weak from the effects of recent illness, the king," says M. Michelet, "went to return thanks at the shrine of St. Jean de Lyon. The eyes of the convalescent fell upon a new-comer, Mdlle. de Hautefort. This Aurora, as she was called, on account of her rosy complexion and her waving hair, gilded now by the reflection of the painted window, seemed a ray from heaven-a new life-to the royal Lazarus. He ordered the hassock on which he was kneeling to be carried to her. A northern maiden would have been overcome with surprise and confusion, and have committed some blunder. She, however, with a slight blush, which added to the brightness of her large blue eyes, took the hassock, and, without using it, placed it respectfully by her side."

From that day the king was an altered man. He became assiduous in his attendance in the queen's circle, avowedly for the new maid-of-honour. Entirely devoted to her royal mistress, Mdlle. de Hautefort used her influence in favour of Anne of Austria, whose mouthpiece she became.

What was Richelieu to do? He tried to soften the heart of his old patroness the queen-mother. He established himself in her barge as it slowly descended the Loire, and he passed long hours on one knee by her couch "filant le parfait amour," trying to revive a spark of an extinct flame.

It was in vain. The queen-mother reached Paris more angry, if possible, than ever. She demanded his dismissal. The king seemed to waver. In the midst of the discussion Richelieu

burst into the apartment, and entreated her forgiveness. She replied by a torrent of abuse. The king fled to Versailles. Marie de Medicis remained at the Luxembourg in triumph, and received the congratulations of the courtiers.

Richelieu had the wisdom to follow his master. Louis XIII. already had missed him. Oppressed by public cares, surrounded by enemies, foreign and domestic, what should he do without his right hand? At that instant Richelieu appeared. He humbly tendered his resignation, and was commanded to remain.

So ended the 11th November 1630, the famous journée des dupes, by which the only gainer was Richelieu.

Clemency was not one of his attributes. Death, exile, and imprisonment were the fate of the enemies who were already rejoicing over his downfall. The king never again attempted to part from him.

Somewhat similar to the relation between Louis XIII. and Richelieu, and equally galling, was the bond which united the cardinal to his prime minister, the celebrated Père Joseph, who, under his flannel robe, hid a heart as ambitious as that of his patron.

"In spite," says Michelet, "of his bare feet, his rope girdle, and his humility, he aimed at the cardinal's hat, which would no doubt have enabled him to supplant his friend. Richelieu, who saw his object, tried as early as the year 1628 to get rid of him by shutting him up in a country town. He offered him the bishopric of La Rochelle. But Joseph, with equal cunning, declined the honour of being buried alive, and insisted upon remaining a Capuchin. Joseph had four chief secretaries belonging to his order, an establishment of his own, horses, carriages, and apartments in all the royal palaces. Nothing pleased the king so much as to see the ministry filled with these gray gowns. thought that much might be permitted to a king who provided Capuchins with carriages.

He

On the other hand, Richelieu, who had experienced the falsehood of Joseph, while he made him so important, took care to keep him under his eye. He said that he loved his dear brother so much that he must live with him. So the Père Joseph, with his Capuchins and his secretaries, were established on the same floor and in the same apartment with the cardinal, who was thus himself a spy upon this chief of spies."

Joseph was violently anti-Austrian. A contemporary historian (Tallemant des Réaux) says of him, that he imagined himself born to defeat the House of Austria; and at this time he assisted Richelieu in obtaining the king's consent to the masterpiece of his foreign policy, the alliance with Gustavus Adolphus.

The Thirty-Years War was raging. The leaders of the Catholic party were the two fanatical heads of the House of Austria,