The old Abbess was to die in peace, imagining that her Coadjutrix would
succeed her.

Père Joseph needed all his prudence and self-control, says his
biographer, to hide his vexation at being thus “joué par une Princesse.”

But the thing was done, and he made the best of it, secretly hoping
that, “women being naturally inconstant,” the joy of supreme authority
might yet induce Madame d’Orléans to change her mind.

On March 26, 1611, at the age of seventy-eight, Madame Eléonore de
Bourbon died. To all appearance, her Coadjutrix was ready to accept the
succession. She even seemed to listen with favour to the persuasions of
Père Joseph, who pointed out in glowing terms her duty to the Order.
It was near the end of Lent, and Madame d’Orléans held her peace until
after the Festival of Easter. On Low Sunday, having assembled the
Community, she announced to them that she was about to write to the
King and the Queen Regent, praying them to nominate an abbess in her
stead.

This was a heavy blow to Père Joseph, and the affair was complicated
by his knowledge of the fact that Madame d’Orléans did not now wish
to return to Toulouse, but dreamed of founding a new convent in the
province of Poitou, where the religious life, as she understood it,
would be lived in all devotion and austerity.

Père Joseph, who with all his cleverness and strength had an attractive
modesty, felt himself unequal to dealing alone with this reverend lady,
and with the discord and confusion she had caused at Fontevrault. This,
at least, was the reason he gave for his appeal to the Bishop of Luçon,
“whose superior and transcendent genius had enchanted him,” and who
happened to be residing very near Fontevrault, at his Priory of Les
Roches.

The Abbey of Fontevrault was quite independent of episcopal authority,
and it was only as representing the Pope or the King that any bishop
had the right to enter it. Père Joseph appealed to Richelieu as a
friend; and, judging from his lifelong devotion, it may be imagined
that he joyfully seized this opportunity of rousing the Bishop from the
state of fever-stricken depression in which he had returned from Paris.
Here, if ever, was a case of a man’s “sharpening the countenance of
his friend.” The dying flame was blown into life; hope took suddenly
the place of something very like despair. The Capuchin discussed his
difficulties with the Bishop, and they agreed that the whole question
must be laid before the Queen Regent. Therefore they travelled together
to Fontainebleau, where the Court was staying, amid all the enchantment
of its exquisite spring.

Marie de Médicis, at this time, was far from happy. A year had passed
since Henry’s death; and to a woman both lazy and power-loving, the
quarrels, ambitions, jealousies, of the princes and courtiers, each day
harder to satisfy, were a constant torment; matters not being improved
by the insolent pride of Concini, who posed as the equal of them all.
The envoys from Poitou, asking nothing for themselves--no one dreamed
that these two men, one ugly, grave, humble in appearance, the other
delicate, worn, exhausted, would one day rule France and influence
Europe--were graciously received by the Queen; and it appears that Père
Joseph, in a few moments of private conversation after the Fontevrault
business had been explained, spoke to her of his companion in terms
of enthusiastic praise, as “a man of sublime genius and extraordinary
merit, capable of the highest employments.” The words remained in the
Queen’s mind and bore fruit, though not immediately.

The Bishop and the friar returned to Fontevrault, bearing the royal
permission for the community to choose an abbess among themselves; but
in the presence and with the consent of the Bishop of Luçon and Père
Joseph. The solemn election took place in the summer, when the Grand
Prioress, Madame Louise de Lavedan de Bourbon, was naturally chosen.

Madame Antoinette d’Orléans retired to Lencloître, a half-ruined
convent of the Order near Poitiers, and was there joined by many nuns
from all parts of France, and even from Fontevrault itself, who desired
to lead a stricter life under her guidance. It was not long before she
founded, with the help and approval of Père Joseph and the Bishops of
Luçon and Poitiers, a congregation known as _Les Filles du Calvaire_,
independent of Fontevrault, the object of which was the practice of the
Rule of St. Benedict in all its austere purity.

Pushed constantly to the front by Père Joseph, and with no
unwillingness on his own part, the Bishop of Luçon added much to his
reputation by his conduct of these affairs; State affairs, they might
almost be called, considering the rank of those concerned and the
wealth and political importance of the great Order of Fontevrault.

                              CHAPTER IV

                               1611-1615

Waiting for an opportunity--Political unrest--The States-General of
1614--The Bishop of Luçon speaks.

Richelieu worked hard in his diocese for the next three years,
struggling all the while with ill-health and impatience. He went to
Paris once during this time and offered his services to the powerful
Concini, who received him graciously; but nothing more came of it. And
the Queen was for the present inaccessible. Another disappointment
was his failure to be elected as representative of his ecclesiastical
province, Bordeaux, at a convocation of the clergy which was held in
Paris in the early days of the Regency. On this occasion the Archbishop
of Bordeaux, Cardinal de Sourdis--nicknamed _Sordido_--showed himself
an enemy to the aspiring young man.

But no envious Metropolitan could keep Richelieu long in the
background. He was becoming a very popular figure in the west country,
of which Poitou and its learned capital were the centre. His private
life appears to have been blameless. He kept up an affectionate
intercourse with his own family. For his mother he was still “mon
malade,” from childhood a sickly, brilliant creature, a subject of
uneasiness and pride. His sister, Madame du Pont-de-Courlay, turned to
him for sympathy in a money loss or the death of a little child. He
never lost sight of his brother Alphonse, the Carthusian, whose refusal
had made him a bishop, and whom, in later years of power, he dragged
from his cloister to be Archbishop and Cardinal.

He was a favourite with most of his neighbours, clerical and lay. His
correspondence bears witness to the wideness of his acquaintance and
interests, both public and private; people appealed to him as a friend,
an arbitrator, and he never disappointed them. He was courteous, kind,
even tender in his language: “episcopal and benign.” He was on the
politest terms with such of the great men as occasionally crossed his
path: the Duc de Sully, governor of Poitou, now no longer a courtier
and an absentee; the Duc de Villeroy, still in office, father of his
friend M. d’Alincourt, and others of high rank and importance. His
letters to such men as these, as well as to his more intimate friends,
might have foreshadowed his coming greatness for those who had eyes
to see. To the general company, however, the writer whose well-turned
assurances and compliments had such a background of passionate ambition
for his own and for his country’s glory, was nothing but a clever
phrase-maker, a young man of seven-and-twenty who could talk and
argue, convert a few Protestants, deal discreetly with the wrangles of
religious women. And outside a limited circle the name of Richelieu was
probably unknown, except as that of a pensioned courtier of the Regency.

While the Bishop of Luçon waited for his opportunity, political and
religious unrest was deepening in France. Henry IV.’s policy of
opposition to the House of Austria and alliance with Savoy, Holland,
and the German Protestants, had been set aside very early in the new
reign, and two royal marriages were arranged to bind France closer to
the Holy See and Catholic Europe. Louis XIII. was to be married to the
Infanta Anna of Spain--known to history as Anne of Austria--and his
eldest sister, Élisabeth, to the Infant of Spain, afterwards Philip
IV. These marriages seem to have pleased nobody in France except the
Regent, her immediate Court circle and her Ministers, whose only hope
of keeping their place lay in her favour. The Foreign Secretary,
Villeroy, the Chancellor, Brûlart de Sillery, the Connétable de
Montmorency, were among the Queen’s advisers in this affair. Most
of the nobles, and especially the princes, were more or less in
opposition; the strengthening of the Crown by so close an alliance with
Spain did not suit their interests. Henry IV. himself, when the project
was first laid before him by the Spanish Ambassador in 1610, had not
listened encouragingly.

The Huguenot party was both displeased and alarmed. Assemblies were
held at Nîmes, at Saumur, at La Rochelle; but the leaders, such as
the Ducs de Bouillon and de Rohan--Sully’s son-in-law--were not ready
to proceed to civil war. Condé, at first throwing in his lot with
them, soon went farther. He gathered troops in the west and threatened
Poitiers, after publishing, with the other princes, a fierce manifesto
against the Regent and her advisers. The young Bishop of Poitiers,
Richelieu’s friend, took matters with a high hand, closed the gates in
the Queen’s name, and prepared to defend the town against Condé, with
the high approval of the future Abbé de St Cyran, a worthy member, like
himself, of the Church Militant. The Prince’s bands overran Poitou,
annoying the peaceable inhabitants, Madame de Richelieu among them,
exacting large sums and quartering themselves in the villages.

In a fiery letter to M. de Neufbourg, an officer of Condé’s ally, the
Duc de Mayenne, the Bishop of Luçon expresses his amazement that his
mother has been thought worthy of so little courtesy. “Be good enough,”
he says, “to exempt the parish of Saulnes, which belongs to Madame
de Richelieu, from the lodging of troops and the contributions they
demand. I would have written direct to him (M. de Mayenne) had not his
treatment of my mother made me aware that he either believes me to be
no longer of this world or that he deems me now and for ever incapable
of doing him any service. Therefore I address myself to you....”

Like his episcopal brother of Poitiers, Richelieu took his stand openly
on the side of Royalty and against the horde of greedy nobles who
caught at any pretext to add to their own possessions and power. It was
not only the political necessities of his later life that made him
their enemy.

The flame of civil war soon died down. In May 1614 the Queen signed the
treaty of St. Menehould, which pacified the princes, after some delay,
by granting most of their desires. Condé, Nevers, Vendôme, Mayenne,
Longueville, Bouillon and others received enormous pensions, as well as
fortresses and governments; last, not least, the States-General were
summoned, as the manifesto had demanded, to discuss the grievances
of the three estates of the realm. The Huguenot party had already
obtained some satisfaction. For the time, the Regent and her ministers
had bought victory: the arrangements for the Spanish marriages went
steadily on.

The Bishop of Luçon was directed by Sully, governor of Poitou, to
supervise “with gentleness” the election in his diocese of deputies for
the States-General. He did his duty, no doubt, in the matter; but the
election that interested him was that of the diocese of Poitiers. There
his friends were working for him. La Rocheposay, the warlike Bishop,
his lieutenant Saint-Cyran, and Richelieu’s faithful Bouthillier,
smoothed the way for his uncontested election as one of the two
deputies of the clergy of Poitiers. The old city, so lately in a stage
of siege, rang joy-bells on August 10, the appointed day. All over
Poitou, all over France, the bells were ringing, for every estate in
the kingdom hoped much from the States-General. It may at once be said
that rich and poor, great and small, were disappointed. What the bells
rang in was not liberty, release from taxes, confirmation of rights,
but the reign of Richelieu. And in consequence of that reign the voice
of France in her States-General was not heard again for one hundred and
seventy-five years--not until, in 1789, “the whirligig of Time brought
in his revenges.”

The States-General of 1614 were formally opened in Paris on Monday,
October 27. On Sunday took place the customary procession from the
great Convent of the Augustins on the left bank, along the quay,
winding through narrow streets crowded with spectators and hung with
tapestry, to the bridge over the Seine which led most directly to the
Cathedral of Notre Dame, where a solemn high mass was to be celebrated.
It was a procession gay with colour and variety, although most of the
clergy and all the Third Estate were in sober black. But the way was
kept throughout by the royal guards, Swiss and French, in their varied
liveries. Archers marched alongside, bearing immense tapers, faint
flames quivering in the chilly air of the early autumn morning. Many of
the deputies shivered, and complained of the cold.

It was a representative procession. The religious Orders, parish
clergy, and trade corporations of Paris, the canons of Notre Dame, the
doctors of the University--these led the way. Then came the hundred and
ninety-two deputies of the _Tiers État_, walking four by four, with
their distinguished President, Robert Miron, provost of the merchants.
Then a hundred and thirty-two nobles in Court dress with swords. Then
the clerical deputies, a hundred and forty, followed by the bishops and
archbishops in purple and the cardinals in red. Then the Archbishop
of Paris, bearing the sacred Host under a gorgeous canopy. Then the
boy-King, walking in white, his mother in deep black, her young
children, her attendant ladies and gentlemen; Queen Marguerite de
Valois, the “aunt” of the Royal Family, and various other great ladies,
princes, and nobles attached to the Court. After these followed the
whole Parliament and the Municipality of Paris, with many officials and
guards.

Like a wave of noise, colour and light, with its tramping feet and
flickering candles, under the heavy clangour of the great bells, the
procession rolls into Notre Dame, and the Cardinal-Archbishop of
Bordeaux, Richelieu’s hated Metropolitan, thunders out his sermon to
the Estates of France: “Fear God. Honour the King.”

The three Estates held their sittings in three of the vast rooms of the
Convent of the Augustins, but the opening ceremony took place in the
hall of the old Hôtel de Bourbon, east of the Louvre. There the little
King, a dark, solemn boy, whose majority, on entering his fourteenth
year, had lately been celebrated, sat enthroned “on violet velvet,
powdered with golden lilies.” On his right were the two Queens, Marie
and Marguerite, and the young Princess Élisabeth, the future Queen of
Spain. His brother Gaston, a lively, pretty child of five, his little
sisters Christine and Henriette Marie, sat on his left; a gorgeous ring
of princes, courtiers and great ladies surrounded them. In theory, the
body of the hall was kept for deputies; in fact, it was inconveniently
crowded by Parisians, chiefly hangers-on of the Court. “Tout était
plein de dames et de damoiselles, de gentilshommes et autre peuple,”
says Florimond Rapine, the chronicler. The deputies were indignant, and
it was long before all could find places. Then the wild, ill-assorted
assembly listened kindly to a few stammering words from Louis XIII.,
and impatiently to a long harangue from Chancellor Sillery, which
committed the Government to nothing.

The ceremonies of opening and closing were very much the same. Three
months of arguing and quarrelling, during which Paris was frequently in
an uproar, the Prince de Condé claiming homage that nobody would pay,
the Duc d’Épernon insulting the Parliament, gentlemen fighting in the
streets, the Estates themselves divided into violent parties for and
against the Pope and Spain, the Third Estate demanding the abolition
of pensions and privileges, the nobles and clergy angrily defending
their rights, brought the assembly once more together at the Hôtel de
Bourbon, in the presence of the Court.

Manners had not improved. Two thousand of the baser sort of courtiers,
men and women, with numbers of people of all kinds, had crowded into
the best places. Rapine saw “cardinals, bishops, priors, abbots, the
nobility and all the Third Estate, crowded and pushed without order,
respect, or consideration, among the pikemen and halberdiers.”

  [Illustration: THE MAJORITY OF LOUIS XIII (LOUIS XIII AND MARIE DE
                               MÉDICIS)

               FROM THE PICTURE BY RUBENS IN THE LOUVRE]

In the midst of this babel, the spokesmen of the three Orders had to
present to the King their _cahiers_, containing the result of their
stormy deliberations. First it was the turn of the clergy; and their
orator, chosen, like his fellows, by the influence of the Queen-Regent,
was the Bishop of Luçon.

He had already gained much credit, during the debates of the last
three months, for eloquence and judgment; he was one of the group of
young and brilliant bishops who supported Cardinal du Perron, always
his friend, in his efforts to bring the _Tiers État_ into harmony with
the views of the clergy. The burning question was an article resolved
on by the _Tiers_, demanding that the King’s complete independence of
every power, spiritual or temporal, except God alone, should be made
“a fundamental law of the State.” It was the old Gallican, anti-Roman
doctrine, which, as far as the middle classes of France were concerned,
had been growing in strength for some years. It had fought the League;
it opposed the Jesuits; it defied the authority of the Pope. It rose up
in anger against the courtly politicians who now, with their Spanish
alliances, were contradicting and nullifying the policy of Henry IV.

There were Gallicans among the clergy, but the majority were
Ultramontane, equally loyal to the Pope and to the Queen-Regent’s
government. Cardinal du Perron and his distinguished phalanx wasted
hours of eloquence--and the Cardinal was both a great orator and an
attractive man--in persuading the _Tiers_ to withdraw their obnoxious
article. Matters were made worse by the Parliament of Paris, Gallican
and anti-Spanish to the core, which openly supported the _Tiers_, as
also did Condé and his followers and the Huguenot party under Bouillon.

Forty years later, Louis XIV.’s whip was to teach both nobles and
Parliament the meaning of that divine right and absolute power which
they were now eager to claim for their kings. On this occasion the
article was referred to Louis XIII., and by his authority was expunged
from the _cahier_ of the _Tiers État_.

It was in a spirit of triumphant loyalty, therefore, both to his Order
and to the King--or rather, to the Queen and her councillors--that
Armand de Richelieu made the oration which gained him his first real
fame. He stood before the whole of France--all France that signified,
for even the humble millions were represented, though mostly by men
of law--slight and delicate, with a pleasant voice, an easy, graceful
manner, eyes bright and clear, yet thoughtful, a mouth both strong and
smiling under the thin moustache brushed sharply upwards, which always
gave him the look of a soldier.

His discourse lasted an hour, and gave great satisfaction to all his
hearers, who were struck by the discretion with which he touched on
many difficult subjects “without offending anybody.” It was indeed a
delicate task, to complain of the treatment bestowed on the Church
and her clergy by the chief authorities in the kingdom; to praise the
clergy, their learning, probity and self-denial, and to claim for
them a larger share in the management of State affairs; to point out
the many abuses of lay patronage; to condemn the excesses of some
Huguenots while declaring that no weapons but example, instruction
and prayer should be used against those who, “if blinded by error,”
yet lived peaceably under the royal authority; to remonstrate against
unfair taxation, corruption and bribery in high places; to demand
the reduction of pensions and the abolition of duels, according to
the laws of “the great Henry”:--and in the same breath to praise the
Queen-Regent for the great things she had already done in preserving
“peace, repose and public tranquillity,” chief of which was that
“sacred bond of a double marriage” which was soon to unite “the
greatest kingdoms of the world.” In short, while performing the full
duty prescribed by his Order, to make himself _persona grata_ to Marie
de Médicis, was a task worthy of Armand de Richelieu.

The Baron de Sénecé, spokesman of the nobles, followed the Bishop of
Luçon, but had little to say. On the other hand Robert Miron, who
spoke--on his knees--for the _Tiers État_, had a great deal. He drew
a frightful picture of the “wounds and sorrows” of the poor people
of France, their constant labour and heavy burdens. He complained
bitterly of the abuses in the Church, the privileges, oppressions,
public and private violence of the nobles, the delays and the
corruption of justice, the ravages of armed men.

“Without the labour of the poor people,” he cried, “where were the
tithes of the Church--the vast possessions of the nobility, their wide
lands, their great fiefs--the houses, the incomes, the heritages of
the Third Estate? And further, who gives your Majesty the means of
keeping up the royal dignity, of providing for the necessary expenses
of the State, within and without the kingdom? who gives the means of
raising men for the wars, if not the labourer and the taxes he pays?”
And he added those remarkable words: “It is to be feared that despair
may teach the poor people that the soldier is but a peasant bearing
arms, and that when the vinedresser takes up an arquebus, he may become
hammer instead of anvil.”

But Miron, like the other speakers, professed devoted loyalty to the
King, only begging that the royal authority might interfere to protect
the poor people. And Miron’s harangue, like the others, had no real
consequence whatever. Richelieu observes in his _Memoirs_ that the
States-General ended without advantage to anybody.

The deputies were dismissed, contumelious and discontented, and
returned to the provinces freshly burdened by their expenses.

The Bishop of Luçon went back to his diocese; but his speech was
printed by the famous Cramoisy. The Court consoled itself for a very
tiresome winter by one of the most magnificent Mid-Lent ballets that
Paris had ever seen.

                               CHAPTER V

                               1615-1616

Richelieu appointed Chaplain to Queen Anne--Discontent of the
Parliament and the Princes--The Royal progress to the South--Treaty
of Loudun--Return to Paris--Marie de Médicis and her favourites--The
young King and Queen--The Duc de Luynes--Richelieu as negotiator and
adviser--The death of Madame de Richelieu.

In the autumn of the year 1615 Richelieu was appointed chaplain to the
new young Queen of France, Anne of Austria. He owed this appointment
partly to the impression made by his good looks and talent on Marie
de Médicis, partly to the friendly intrigues of the Bishop of
Bayonne--afterwards Archbishop of Tours, and an adorer of the beautiful
Duchesse de Chevreuse. Owing to the troubled state of France and the
long delay of the royal entry into Paris, he did not enter upon his
duties till the late spring of 1616.

The easy triumph of the Court party over the rebel elements in the
nation had not lasted long. When the Parliament of Paris saw that the
States-General and all their talk had ended in nothing--no reform
of abuses, no strengthening of the law, while Concini, the foreign
favourite, now a Marshal of France and Lieutenant-General of Picardy,
was fast becoming the most powerful person in the kingdom--it raised
its voice in angry remonstrance. And the men of law did not stand
alone. “Derrière le parlement,” says M. Henri Martin, “il y avait les
princes, et à côté des princes, les huguenots.” In fact, a strong party
was making a new and final struggle against the Spanish marriages. The
voice of the English ambassador, Sir Thomas Edmunds, chimed in with
those of Condé, Bouillon and the Parliament, begging at least for
delay: in the present state of Europe, James I. found these marriages
“inopportune.” His eldest daughter, Elizabeth, had lately married the
Protestant Elector Palatine, nephew of the Duc de Bouillon and brought
up by him. England was thus strongly linked with the Protestant cause,
both in France and Germany.

But neither foreign opinion, Parliament, princes, nor cowardly counsels
in her own household--for her favourite Leonora, Concini’s wife, was
against her in this matter--could turn Marie de Médicis from her
intention. The King and the Ministers, under her orders, haughtily
denied that the Parliament had any right to interfere in affairs of
State. She tried, but in vain, to win over Condé and his friends. When
her failure was plain--Condé retiring into the country, publishing a
manifesto which demanded the delay of the marriages and the disgrace of
Concini and the old Ministers, and following up his words by raising
an armed force--she replied by arresting his friend Nicolas Le Jay,
a president of the Parliament and leader of the opposition there.
The guards seized him at five o’clock in the morning of August 17
and hurried him into a coach. On that same morning the whole Court,
conducted by the Ducs de Guise and d’Épernon with a strong body of
troops, set out on the long journey to the south. President Le Jay,
sorely against his will, followed the King as far as Amboise, where he
was left behind as a prisoner.

Concini--formerly Marquis, now also Maréchal d’Ancre--remained to
oppose the princes in Picardy, of which the young Duc de Longueville
was governor. The Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin (Montmorency-Laval,
Marquis de Sablé) was left with a royal army of 12,000 men to protect
and overawe Paris, already commanded by the guns of the Château de
Vincennes, and to keep a check on the Prince de Condé.

The royal progress to the south was slow and dangerous, with many
delays and annoyances. Travelling was not easy even in summer weather.
The long train of coaches, baggage-waggons and pack-mules, horsemen,
running footmen, with the large military escort, took three days to
travel the good road between Paris and Orléans, and then for some
unknown reason, perhaps the uncertainty of Condé’s movements, did not
arrive at Tours for ten days more. Here the Court was met by three
deputies from the Huguenot assembly at Grenoble, who had just missed
His Majesty at Paris, and who, “with more insolence than formerly,”
says Richelieu, pressed again upon him the demands of the _Tiers État_
and requested him to proceed no further on his journey, “in which they
were interested, not only as being of _la Religion prétendue réformée_,
but as good Frenchmen.”

In consequence of this and other disloyal proceedings, the King
publicly declared the Prince de Condé and all his adherents guilty of
high treason unless they laid down their arms within a month, and sent
his declaration to be registered by the Parliament of Paris.

The Court arrived at Poitiers on September 4, and was detained there,
to the Queen-mother’s great vexation, till the 27th. The little Madame
of thirteen, on her way to be married to the Prince of Spain, had an
attack of small-pox, and Marie herself suffered from an inflamed arm.
As Condé was already fighting his way across country with the object
of blocking the road to Spain, while the Duc de Rohan, with a small
Huguenot army, was preparing to second him by occupying Guienne and the
Bordelais, it appeared at one moment as if the royal marriages might be
effectually stopped.

Two persons profited by the delay. One was the Maréchale d’Ancre.
That mysterious Leonora, accused, probably falsely, of witchcraft and
so many other crimes, seized this opportunity to creep back into the
favour of her royal mistress and foster-sister, whom she, in concert
with the Minister Villeroy and others, had seriously annoyed by
advising her against pressing on the marriages. By devoted nursing of
the royal invalids, and by the help of her Jewish doctor, Montalto,
Leonora soon regained Marie’s selfish affection, to lose it once more,
and finally, before the end of her tragic life.

The other person who profited by the royal visit to Poitiers was the
Bishop of Luçon. On returning from Paris in the spring, feverish and
irritable, he had plunged deep in theological studies at his favourite
Coussay. It seems to have been a grievance that even his friends should
disturb him at his books. But when the Court arrived at Poitiers
and was detained there, all loyal persons of any distinction in the
province were bound to wait upon their Majesties. The Bishop of Luçon
was among the foremost in paying his duty. Certain vague talk of the
chaplaincy to Queen Anne now took solid shape, and he received the
promise of his appointment, which was definitely made in November, when
the Court was at Bordeaux. During the interval, it is evident that
Richelieu considered himself bound to the Queen-mother’s service. He
made it his business to send a report of the health of Madame, who was
left behind at Poitiers for a few days when the Court hurried forward;
and his letters to Marie de Médicis are full of grateful devotion.

The little French princess was conveyed to the Spanish frontier,
and the little Spanish princess was received in exchange. Under the
escort of the Duc de Guise and six thousand men--for the Huguenots,
under Rohan, made the journey perilous--she was brought to Bordeaux,
where the King and his mother awaited her. There the marriage was
finally blessed--it had already, in the case of both princesses, been
celebrated by proxy--and there the Court lingered on till the middle of
December, when it began its slow northward journey, not reaching Tours
till January 25, 1616.

The country through which the Court travelled was in a terrible state,
trampled and devastated by armies--“chose pitoyable et horrible,” says
Pontchartrain. In spite of the Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin, Condé had
crossed the Loire at Neuvy and was storming westward through Berry,
Touraine and Poitou, “pillant et saccageant,” says Richelieu, “tous
les lieux où il passoit.” Again Madame de Richelieu had her share in
the sufferings of the poor province, which seemed to her even worse
off than in the Wars of the League. Forty years she had lived at
Richelieu, and never had she seen such men or such ravages. “If these
armies believe in God,” she said, “it is as the devils do.” The army
of Bois-Dauphin was also marching south-westward, to protect the
progress of the Court. Friend or foe, royalist or rebel, it made no
difference in the wholesale robbery and cruelty which desolated the
villages, utterly destroying any lingering peaceful fruit of Henry’s
administration. Even Sully had now taken sides with Condé; and the Ducs
de Soubise and de la Trémoïlle had raised a fresh army of Huguenots
in Poitou. The wintry weather made everything worse. If the armies
caused the wretched peasants to suffer, they suffered themselves. An
icy rain was followed by hard frosts, snow, and “a great furious wind”;
thousands of men, on both sides, died of the wet and the bitter cold.
In Paris, boats and bridges were wrecked by the masses of broken ice in
the Seine.

The Bishop of Luçon, writing strong remonstrances on his mother’s and
his own behalf to the commanders, was also painfully interested in the
negotiations which began after the Court had reached Verteuil. He would
have been glad to be actively employed, but his time was not quite
come, and he could only look on, trusting to his friends--especially
Claude Barbin, an old acquaintance, the trusted financial secretary of
Marie de Médicis--to push his name and fortunes.

Both parties were tired of the struggle. The Court did not wish for
eternal war: the princes and their followers saw that, the Spanish
marriages once carried through, their wisest line of action was to make
a good bargain for themselves while posing as disappointed patriots.
The treaty of Loudun satisfied them for the time. Several of the
King’s older Ministers were sacrificed, notably Chancellor Sillery.
The Maréchal d’Ancre had to give up his command in Picardy, with the
strong city of Amiens, to the Duc de Longueville, but was consoled with
the military government of Normandy. A general amnesty was published:
President Le Jay was set at liberty, and the Comte d’Auvergne was
freed from his long confinement in the Bastille; the rights already
granted to the Huguenots were confirmed; Condé’s war expenses were
paid, amounting to 1,500,000 _livres_. Decidedly a good bargain; the
best he had ever made. “This time, it is true,” says M. Henri Martin,
“Condé’s soldiers had well earned their money: they had pillaged,
burnt, ravaged France with great zeal, from the banks of the Somme to
those of the Garonne.”

The other princes were also magnificently paid: their rebellion cost
the country, “according to Richelieu, more than twenty millions”; and
in the matter of places and governments, they had what they chose to
demand. In addition, Condé claimed the right of signing the decrees
of the Royal Council. The Duc de Villeroy, a clever old politician,
advised the Queen to grant this also. It was better, he said, to bind
Monsieur le Prince to the Court than to let him fortify himself in the
provinces. “Do not fear,” he said, “to put a pen in a man’s hand while
you are holding his arm.”

So ended the demonstration against the Spanish marriages. Marie de
Médicis gained her point: the princes found effectual consolation; and
the poor people of France, as usual, paid the bill. The salt tax, which
had been reduced, was raised to its former level, and new river tolls
were established.

The Court lingered at Tours and at Blois until the whole business of
the treaty was concluded, and made its triumphal entry into Paris
on May 16, 1616--an unlucky conjunction of numbers, according to
astrologers. The young Queen, a pretty and attractive girl in her
indolent Spanish way--somewhat petulant, and no wonder, considering the
miseries of the journey not to be escaped even by queens, and the cool
neglect of her boy-husband--sat in an open litter carried by mules,
for the better view of the citizens of Paris. The noise in the streets
was so great--bells, drums and trumpets, the clatter of arms (for the
city bands were all on foot and firing off their muskets)--that Her
Majesty’s mules pranced with terror, and she was obliged to take
refuge in her coach. But the welcome of Paris was undoubtedly hearty,
and if the Spanish marriage still caused discontent, it did not appear
openly. Indeed the Spanish embassy and their young Princess had only
to complain of the fact that the opposite party had gained most of
its ends in the treaty of Loudun, and that their enemy, the Prince de
Condé, with certain Huguenot magnates, his allies, appeared for the
moment to rule both Court and Council.

The Bishop of Luçon had preceded the Court to Paris. He had taken a
house in the Rue des Mauvaises-Paroles, in the quarter of the markets;
an old street which still existed in the early nineteenth century, but
has since been swept away. Here he was within easy reach of his Court
duties at the Louvre.

Under the high roofs of the palace, in the old round towers and
new pavilions and galleries, crowded in a labyrinth of rooms and
staircases, walled courts and gardens, surrounded by a confused noise
of building, especially towards the river, where the long gallery,
joining the Louvre to the Tuileries, was not yet finished, blocked to
the west, on the site of the Place du Carrousel, by narrow streets
of great hôtels and mean houses, churches, chapels, hospitals--lived
the young King and Queen with their households, and the Queen-Mother,
herself lodged in a low, dark, but richly furnished _entresol_, with
as many of her ladies, attendants, favourites, servants, as could find
room in the old rabbit-warren of so many and such ghostly memories.

At the moment, though her personal rule was not to last long, Marie
de Médicis, the Florentine, the “fat banker,” as Madame de Verneuil
disrespectfully called her, was the centre of power and the fountain
of promotion. It was therefore especially to her that the courtiers,
Richelieu among them, paid their devoted duty.

Marie de Médicis was at this time a handsome, heavy-looking woman of
forty-three; cold of temperament, grave and haughty in manner, yet
without real dignity; obstinate, yet weak; nervous, irritable, subject
to fits of violent anger with floods of tears; never affectionate
or caressing, even to her own children; fond of amusement, of
animals, dwarfs, freaks of nature; passionately eager for power and
magnificence; a lover of beautiful things, a generous but ignorant
patron of art; especially curious of precious metals and stones,
jewellery, bric-à-brac of all kinds; interested in architecture,
building and gardening. She laid the first stone of her palace of
“Luxembourg” in 1615, and in this very year 1616 she planted the
stately avenue of elms, known as the Cours-la-Reine, along the
river-bank beyond the gardens of the Tuileries. Splendid in her gifts,
she was wildly extravagant, as soon as it became possible, with
the money of the State. She was superstitious and religious, even
_dévote_, after her fashion, and the Church in France owed her much:
if not refined by nature or training, she was yet always on the side
of decency and moral reform. This is something to say for a woman who
was forced for years to live in a Court and a society so openly and
coarsely immoral, and to treat La Reine Margot as a friend and a sister.

At the time when Richelieu became attached to the Court, that eccentric
princess was no longer living in her palace opposite the Louvre.
She died in the spring of 1615, shortly after the closing of the
States-General. In his memoirs the Cardinal devotes several pages to
that “greatest princess of her time,” her talents and her charities.

At the Louvre, next to the Queen-Mother, the most profitable objects
of a courtier’s devotion were the Maréchal and the Maréchale d’Ancre.
They were Marie’s most intimate and inseparable friends. Unworthy of
such a position, no doubt: but the wife of Henry IV. was hardly happy
enough willingly to dispense with those who had followed her from
Florence. Leonora Galigaï, her nurse’s daughter, first the companion of
her childhood, had been appointed head of her maids: of low birth, but
extremely clever, and only too capable of managing her mistress; though
her own supposed account of her influence, “that of a clever woman over
a dull fool,” seems to have been one of the many inventions of her
enemies. A small, dark, ugly, keen-faced creature, Leonora had fallen
in love with the handsome adventurer Concini, who had followed the
Queen to France in search of fortune. They were married, and together
they climbed the heights they desired. Concini swaggered among nobles
and princes, the very type of a royal favourite. He was an insolent,
magnificent bully, with whom the greatest in the land had to reckon.
Yet, though envied and slandered, he was not entirely unpopular, even
at Court. Bassompierre observed that he was neither perfection nor a
fool. He had the daring courage which came of belief in his own lucky
star. He was good-natured and kind, except to his wife; with her, in
spite of their mutual interests, he quarrelled incessantly, and they
lived mostly apart. But the many scandalous jokes, songs and stories
which dealt with the supposed love-affairs of Concini and the Queen are
pronounced by modern historians to be without foundation.

For some years the husband and wife concerned themselves little with
politics. Money and position, especially money, of which Leonora was
excessively greedy, were their favourite objects. They bought a palace
in the Rue de Tournon, near the old Hôtel de Luxembourg, and furnished
it splendidly. But Concini lived chiefly in a house near the river, at
the south-east corner of the small garden of the Louvre, between it and
the old Hôtel de Bourbon. By a bridge from the house to the garden he
could communicate with his wife’s apartments, above those of the Queen.

Leonora left her rooms seldom and unwillingly, except for necessary
attendance on her mistress. She was a nervous invalid, and depended
much on Jewish doctors, quack remedies, and--according to her
enemies--the black art. We are also told, however, that she confessed
regularly and caused the Bible to be read to her. M. Batiffol, in his
picturesque study of the time, describes how she sat all day threading
beads or playing the guitar--she was a fine musician--in the midst
of rich hoards of every description: tapestry, embroidery, mirrors,
cabinets, carpets, cushions, counterpanes, of the most splendid
materials; endless quantities of gold and silver plate; wardrobes
and chests full of beautiful garments that she seldom wore. Beyond
these treasures, she cared for little but money: when she meddled
with politics, it was for the sake of money, or for her husband’s
advancement; and this last matter interested her keenly in the exciting
changes of that winter, which had carried her, sorely against her will,
on a most trying journey.

The return from that journey found the Maréchal d’Ancre, now
Lieutenant-General of Normandy, at the height of his power, though a
quarrel with the people of the markets lost him some popularity. The
reconstruction of the Ministry, the fall of Sillery, the temporary
superseding of Jeannin, President of the Council, and later of the
Duc de Villeroy, left the way open for clever men such as Barbin and
Mangot, both followers of Concini. Both admirers, too, of the Bishop of
Luçon, who very soon, by their means, was to become a Minister of State.

From the point of view of a courtier or a politician, the inmates of
the Louvre least worth considering were the young King and Queen. Both
were born in 1601, and in that summer were not quite fifteen years old:
two children, with the minds and tastes of children, on whom etiquette
weighed heavily, who were shy of each other, and cared only for their
own chosen companions and sports.

The little Queen seems to have been singularly childish, for a princess
brought up in the stately Court of Spain. Surrounded at first by her
Spanish ladies, who adored and petted her, she made grave ambassadors
anxious, though her coquettish beauty attracted the French. But there
was a lack of majesty, a love of jokes and games, an impatience of
everything serious, a quick and wilful temper, an amazingly short
memory, combined with a frank regret for her old life--“bien souvent
l’Espagne me manque,” she wrote home in the early days--hardly suitable
to a Queen of France. Her new subjects did not complain; in truth,
after the first rejoicings of her arrival, they saw little of her.
Sometimes she appeared at Court balls, ballets and _carrousels_,
brilliant in her fresh youth, with her dazzlingly white skin, large
eyes, chestnut hair, and the exquisite hands which were her crowning
beauty. Sometimes she drove out in a coach to Saint-Germain, and spent
the day hunting and hawking with the King, who hardly cared for her
company at any other time. Her chaplain, the Bishop of Luçon, attended
on her at the Louvre as a most formal duty. Personally, Anne never
liked him. Though not yet too terrible, he was always too serious for
her. But the Spanish ambassador wrote of him to Philip III.: “There are
not two men in France so zealous for the service of God, of our Crown,
and of the public weal.”

Time was to show whether his Excellency was right on all or any of
these points.

Louis XIII. had been an attractive little child, and was now a
handsome, simple, straightforward boy, whose health and temper,
unluckily, had been ruined by mismanagement. The diary of his
physician, Hérouard--curious if unpleasant reading--shows us a child
brought up on pills and potions quite as much as on food. Add constant
and severe whippings for every small fault, and we have the training
that Henry IV. and Marie de Médicis, here in entire agreement, thought
fitting for their eldest son. Long after Louis was King of France
the floggings continued, enraging interludes to Court etiquette and
ceremonies. “Give me less manners and less whipping!” the poor boy
cried one day, when his mother and her ladies rose and curtseyed on His
Majesty’s entrance.

No wonder that the face he turned to the outside world--including,
for him, his mother and his wife--was sulky and misanthropic. He had
affection to give; but it was all for the one or two special friends
who understood him, and who made it their business to help and indulge
him in the sports he cared about; hunting and hawking three or four
days a week in the forests and the open country near Paris; while in
the intervals there were rabbits and small birds to be caught in the
precincts of the Louvre and the Tuileries, and on wet days various
indoor amusements--cooking, carpentering, turning, teaching his little
dogs tricks, building card castles, and so on. He was passionately
fond of music. Court functions bored him terribly; and though forced,
after his majority, to attend the Council that ruled in his name, and
behaving there with sufficient dignity and intelligence, he took very
little active interest in affairs of State. This carelessness, though
more apparent than real, exactly suited his mother, her favourites and
her ministers. France was given to understand that the young King was
too delicate, too incapable, to act for himself in any public way.

It was not unnatural that all who had political or social ends to gain
should have thought it safe to ignore the King and Queen as children of
no account. But Louis XIII. had one trusted friend; and the Bishop of
Luçon, with many others, was bitterly to repent a too low estimation of
the powers of the Sieur de Luynes.

Charles d’Albert de Luynes was now a man of eight-and-thirty. He
was the eldest son of a small land-owner in Provence, and took
his territorial name from a fief near Aix, which was his mother’s
dowry. His two younger brothers, Honoré and Léon, who shared his
marvellous fortunes--one becoming Duc de Chaulnes, the other Duc de
Piney-Luxembourg--were known in their earlier days as Seigneurs de
Cadenet and de Brantes; Cadenet being a small island in the Rhône,
Brantes a farm and vineyard on a hill at Mornas. The three brothers,
all clever and amiable, caring for each other with an unselfish
affection rare in those days, began life as pages to François de
Daillon, Comte du Lude, a very great man in his own province of Anjou,
and a witty and audacious courtier. He and his friend M. de la Varenne
advanced the three young southerners to the service of King Henry IV.,
who gave them appointments in the Dauphin’s household. Even then the
three, generally liked and esteemed, says Richelieu, had but one pony
and one good coat amongst them.

It was not only his skill in falconry and all other kinds of sport
which endeared Luynes to his young master. From the first he made
himself his friend. He was a really good-natured man, as well as a fine
sportsman and an ambitious courtier, and he laid himself out to give
freedom and happiness to the oppressed, stammering boy. Louis learned,
from a child, to fly to Luynes in all his troubles. He was his constant
companion through the day, his chief playmate, the organiser of his
leisure time. At night in his dreams, often restless and feverish, the
boy would cry out for Luynes.

This high favour did not pass unnoticed, of course, by the Queen-mother
and Concini. They might have crushed Luynes in the early days, but they
took the line of propitiating him--a very great and fatal mistake,
according to Richelieu. Marie gave him the government of Amboise,
resigned by the Prince de Condé in 1615. She thought thus to make
Luynes her creature; and the Maréchal d’Ancre, who had watched him
anxiously for a short time, was deceived by his retiring manners into
thinking him a man of no real account except among birds, but probably
a useful friend, having the ear of the King.

Through this summer of 1616, the Bishop of Luçon was steadily advancing
in favour. Marie de Médicis appointed him her private secretary, with a
handsome pension, and employed him on several political missions. One
of these was of real importance and led to striking results.

In spite of the treaty of Loudun and all its advantages, the Prince
de Condé and his friends were still in a sulky frame of mind. Instead
of coming at once to Paris, the Prince lingered in his new province
of Berry, where the discontented showed signs of gathering round him
once more. This temper of his caused much anxiety to Marie, her new
Ministers, and the Maréchal d’Ancre. It seemed to them necessary that
the Prince should come to Paris. Any fresh disloyalty would be less
formidable there, and his support of the present government, if he
chose to give it, would be more valuable.

The Bishop of Luçon was sent to negotiate with the Prince at Bourges.
“The Queen sent me to him,” he says, “believing that I should have
sufficient fidelity and skill to dissipate the clouds of suspicion
which evil minds had falsely raised against her.” Her belief was
justified. Her envoy not only made the most of the promises with which
he was laden--promises from herself, from the Maréchal d’Ancre, and
last, not least, from Leonora--but he worked on the Prince’s mind by
his own clever and flattering persuasions, assisted probably by the
influence of Père Joseph and his brother, M. du Tremblay, who were
partisans of Condé.

The Prince came to Paris, and was honourably received by their
Majesties at the Louvre. Immediately all Paris was at his feet.
“The Louvre was a solitude,” says Richelieu; “his house was the old
Louvre”--on the site of part of the fortress of Philippe Auguste--“and
one could not approach the door for the multitude of people crowding
there. All who had any affair on hand addressed themselves to him; he
never entered the Council but his hands were full of petitions and
memoirs which had been presented to him, and which were granted at his
will.”

At first Condé enjoyed his new popularity and used his power with
moderation. Had he been a wise man, he might have kept it long; but he
was weak, dissipated, and fiercely ambitious, saying openly that he had
as much right to the throne as the King himself. The other princes,
especially the restless and intriguing Duc de Bouillon, worked upon his
discontent. Naturally, their first object was the ruin of the Maréchal
d’Ancre. Each of them had grievances of his own. Even the Ducs de Guise
and d’Épernon, loyal to the Crown, were ready to draw their swords on
the favourite. The former Ministers, the Parliament, the people of
Paris, were all on the same side, and Concini’s life, darkly plotted
against in high places, was openly threatened in the street. One day,
going alone to visit the Prince, who was entertaining the English
ambassador, Lord Hay, he had a narrow escape of being killed by the
servants.

Concini was a brave man, but he realised his danger, and both he and
his wife were on the eve of escaping from France. Suddenly, however,
the whole face of things changed. The Queen-mother, solemnly warned
by the Duc de Sully, saw that some bold step was necessary if she was
to save herself, her friends, even the young King, from serious peril.
For there were again grumblings of civil war in the provinces, where
the Duc de Longueville was attacking the last fortress in Picardy which
remained in Concini’s hands.

The Ministers Barbin and Mangot, with the Bishop of Luçon, advised a
_coup d’état_, and it was carried out with extraordinary ease. The
Prince de Condé was arrested and imprisoned in the Bastille. The other
princes fled, and Concini triumphed once more; but the people of Paris
showed their hatred by sacking his palace in the Rue de Tournon, full
of treasures worth 200,000 crowns.

On November 14, according to the registers of the parish of Braye,
“s’en est allée de vie à trépas noble dame Suzanne de la Porte, dame de
Richelieu.” The Bishop of Luçon writes to his brother Alphonse:

 “MY DEAR BROTHER,--I regret much that you must learn by this letter
 our common loss of our poor mother, although I know that for you it
 will be the more bearable in that, having yourself renounced the world
 to gain heaven, her life and her death give you certain assurance of
 meeting her again there; since in the latter God gave her as much
 grace, consolation, and sweetness as in the former she had suffered
 contradiction, affliction and bitterness.... For myself, I pray God
 that in future her good example and yours may so profit me that I may
 amend my life.”

M. Avenel gives a letter from Henry de Richelieu, the head of the
family, to his sister Nicole (afterwards Madame de Maillé-Brézé),
begging her to lay their mother’s body, as honourably as possible, in
the chapel of the château, there to await himself and the Bishop, “that
we may all together bear her to the grave.”

It was not till December 8 that “noble dame Suzanne de la Porte” was
laid in the family vault under the church of Braye. But it appears
that her son Armand was waited for in vain. There was question of a
special embassy to Spain on the affairs of the Duke of Savoy; there was
the immediate prospect of becoming a Minister of France. Indeed, he was
already one of a triumvirate--Barbin, Mangot, Richelieu--on whom, under
Concini, depended all affairs of State. Between his mother’s death and
her funeral, he was writing letters vowing eternal gratitude both to
the Maréchal and to Leonora, through whose favour and consideration
alone, he declared, their Majesties had been pleased to appoint him
Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

                              CHAPTER VI

                                 1617

A contemporary view of the state of France--Barbin, Mangot, and
Richelieu--A new rebellion--Richelieu as Foreign Secretary--The Abbé
de Marolles--Concini in danger--The death of Concini--The fall of the
Ministry--Horrible scenes in Paris--Richelieu follows the Queen-mother
into exile.

The Sieur de Pontchartrain, in his _Memoirs_, gives a vivid account of
the state of France in the winter of 1616-17. He was not exactly an
impartial judge, since he had himself been a Minister of State under
the Duc de Villeroy, and he saw things from his patron’s point of view.
But he was an honest man.

Like Sully, he entirely failed to realise the political genius of
the Bishop of Luçon, treating him and his colleagues as contemptible
creatures of Concini. He writes of “the bad management of affairs,
the small regard shown by the Queen-mother for the King, from whom
all affairs are concealed, the unjust detention of M. le Prince de
Condé and the alienation of all the other princes and great men, the
ambitious designs, hurtful to France, of the Maréchal d’Ancre and of
his wife, the banishment from affairs of all the old Ministers of
State, and the establishment of two or three who have neither merit nor
experience, except as ministering to the passions of the Maréchal and
his wife (these were M. Mangot, Barbin, and Richelieu-Luçon).... Thus
all things were embroiled; and in order to fortify herself against evil
designs, the Queen-mother, assisted by the counsel of the said Maréchal
d’Ancre and of the said _sieurs_ Barbin, Mangot, and Richelieu, Bishop
of Luçon, resolved to prepare openly for war.”

Pontchartrain concludes that the sole motive of this worthless and
tyrannical council was to maintain the Maréchal in absolute power:
also that under the confusion of war expenditure might be concealed
the “great gifts, pensions and appointments” which he took from the
national finances.

That the Queen-mother was wrong-headed and foolish, that Concini’s
haughty swagger and Leonora’s avarice and secret intrigues were hateful
and degrading elements in both Court and government, no one can deny.
But those who stand farther off than Pontchartrain may see what was
hidden from him, and probably from many worthy persons of his day--that
Barbin, Mangot and Richelieu were not unpatriotic in advising war
against the rebel princes and nobles, whose motives, after all, were no
purer than those of Concini.

As to themselves, Barbin was a man of clean hands, a rare attribute in
those days; clear-headed and wise. Mangot, if not brilliant, had the
merit of being loyal to his colleagues. Richelieu, in this first short
ministry, gave every sign of future greatness, and in a way which makes
not only Pontchartrain, but Sully, seem unnaturally blind. Henry’s old
Minister was one of those who spoke most slightingly of the man who,
more than any other, was to carry on Henry’s foreign policy.

He was amazingly eager and young. He sprang into office like a soldier
into the saddle, his whole mind and body devoted at once to the service
of his country. The administration of his poor little diocese had
taught him to command men. That those who worked with him felt his
superiority, not only in position but in talent, is shown by the fact
that he was at once given precedence over the other Ministers. The
Comte de Brienne resented this, observing in an unfriendly manner that
a Bishop should reside in his diocese. The Maréchal d’Ancre, on the
other hand, pressed Richelieu to resign his see. His motive was plain,
and had nothing to do with the welfare of the people of Luçon: being
thus deprived of his chief means of living, the young Minister would be
entirely dependent on his patron’s will. Richelieu was far too clever
to yield, and the advice of his friend Barbin strengthened his refusal.
“Considering the changes which might come about, either through the
changeable humours of that personage or by accidents to his fortune, I
would never consent, which made him unreasonably angry.”

He resigned his post of chaplain to the reigning Queen, in which he
was succeeded by the young Bishop of Langres, Sébastien Zamet, second
son of the great financier, and afterwards a conspicuous figure in the
history of Port-Royal.

The first duty of the new Ministers was to crush a new rebellion,
for the Ducs de Bouillon and de Nevers, demanding the release of
Condé and the fall of Concini, had set the east of France in a blaze.
Three armies had to be raised and sent to meet them. The commanders
were chosen--the Comte d’Auvergne, the Duc de Guise, the Maréchal de
Montigny; a harder matter was to find the men and the money. By means
of a new tax, Richelieu and Barbin were able to hire a few thousand
mercenaries from Flanders, Germany, Holland and Switzerland; the rest
were recruited in France by gentlemen who took a heavy commission on
their loyal work: indeed, as usual, the soldiers saw little of their
promised pay, and were driven, as usual, to extract a living from the
wretched people of the provinces. Champagne, the Île de France, the
Nivernais, suffered in this winter of 1616 as Berry, Touraine and
Poitou had done twelve months before.

One of the complaints of the malcontent princes against the government
was the state of the national finances; in truth, the half-dozen years
since Henry’s death had reduced France from relative prosperity to
something very like bankruptcy. But Richelieu retorted on the princes
by a published statement, meant to enlighten the country as to the
fate of some of its funds. The Prince de Condé had received 3,665,990
_livres_; the late Comte de Soissons, his wife and son (Charles de
Bourbon died in 1612, and his family were even more restless and
greedy than himself), 1,600,000 _livres_; the old Prince de Conti,
now also dead, and his worldly widow, 1,400,000 _livres_; the Duc
de Longueville, 1,200,000 _livres_; the Duc de Mayenne, 2,000,000
_livres_; the Duc de Vendôme, 600,000 _livres_; the Duc d’Épernon,
700,000 _livres_; the Duc de Bouillon, 1,000,000 _livres_; all, says
M. Martin, without counting “salaries, pensions, and gifts to their
friends and servants.” As a _livre_ was about the same as a franc,
and then worth five times as much as now, the smallest of these
“gratifications” was equal to £120,000, and the largest to nearly
£800,000 sterling. It must be added that the eight Marshals of France
and six other great officers of the Crown received four times as much
as in the days of Henry.

The royal armies were successful; they drove the princes before them,
destroying their strongholds, and besieged them in the fortified towns
to which they retreated. “They were in despair,” says Pontchartrain.
Henry de Richelieu, a keen and good soldier, served as aide-de-camp to
the Maréchal de Montigny.

It was at this time that Richelieu, as Secretary of State, gave the
Powers of Europe the first intimation that French policy was not for
ever to be bound up with the interests of Spain--a great change, after
nearly seven years of Marie de Médicis’ rule, and a striking forecast
of the future. England, Holland, and Germany were assured of the
friendship of France, on the understanding that no assistance was given
to the rebel princes. The Spanish marriages, Richelieu’s ambassadors
assured the Protestant Powers, did not bind Louis XIII. either to Rome
or to Spain “to the prejudice of our ancient allies.” The King would
give equal treatment to his subjects of either religion. “No Catholic
is so blind as to esteem a Spaniard, in matters of State, more highly
than a French Huguenot.”

Independence of Spain had already been practically shown by Richelieu
in not forbidding the Duc de Lesdiguières, governor of Dauphiné,
himself a distinguished Huguenot, to lead an army of his own across the
Alps in order to support Duke Charles Emmanuel of Savoy in his quarrel
with the Spanish Viceroy of Milan.

Thus Richelieu was already giving Europe a taste of his strength,
and advancing, fast and fearlessly, beyond the narrow lines of the
Bishop of Luçon’s courtly speech before the States-General. He was no
longer “the man of the clergy,” but “the man of France.” Naturally he
was losing the confidence of his empty-headed patron, who scolded the
Ministers like schoolboys and was violently jealous of Richelieu’s
growing influence with the Queen.

“By God, sir,” he wrote to him on some small matter of discontent, “I
complain of you: you treat me too ill; you treat for peace without me;
you make the Queen write to me that for the love of her I am to cease
my pursuit of M. de Montbazon for the money he owes me. In the name of
all the devils, what do you and the Queen expect me to do? Rage gnaws
me to the bones.”

A Ministry that depended on such a favourite was on a slippery slope
indeed. The difficulties, at home and abroad, were enormous, and the
wonder is that Richelieu and his colleagues, during their few months of
uncertain power, were able to do so much.

Just at this time, when he was fighting the princes and parleying
with Europe, the Abbé de Marolles gives a snapshot of him worth many
formal portraits. The Abbé was then a young scholar at the university.
His father, Claude de Marolles, a well-known soldier and courtier,
once commanding the Swiss Guard, had joined the rebel princes and was
attempting to negotiate between the Duc de Nevers and the commanders of
the royal army.

M. Mangot, the Keeper of the Seals, sent for young Michel de Marolles
and inquired of him whether he had received letters from his father or
had had news from any of his father’s people. He warned him to hide
nothing of the truth--“parce qu’il y alloit du service du roi.”

“There was M. de Luçon, in black, flung back (_renversé_) in a leathern
chair, while M. le Garde des Sceaux stood up while speaking to me....”
Presently, “M. de Luçon, who knew my father pretty well and esteemed
him, rose up in his chair and said that in truth he did not believe
that M. de Marolles had turned against the King’s service of his own
free will, but that he was sorry he should have found himself engaged
in so bad a cause. Then he added very low that I might retire, and
that he did not advise me to remain in Paris.”

Such a warning, in those days, was not to be despised, and the young
scholar was sent to his home in Touraine.

In spite of the political and military successes of the Ministers he
was supposed to rule, the storm which overwhelmed the unlucky Concini
was gathering all through that winter at the Louvre. Paris was careless
and gay: after letting out her rage by sacking his house, she was
content to enjoy the scurrilous songs and pamphlets, her favourite
food, which rang through the streets and were sold by hundreds on the
Pont Neuf.

“The year began joyously,” writes Bassompierre, a lighter-hearted
witness than Pontchartrain, and a loyal courtier of Marie de Médicis.
“Many fine assemblies, at which, besides gambling, feasting, and
comedy, there was also good music. Time passed pleasantly at the Fair
of Saint-Germain.”

The Maréchal and Leonora shared little in these amusements. He, at
least, was troubled with a heavy presentiment of misfortune to come,
and a present grief, the illness and death of their little daughter,
caused them both “un cruel déplaisir.” The friendly soul Bassompierre,
who had known him in his Florentine days, visited them in their sorrow
on the very day of the child’s death. He found them together, “fort
affligés,” in the little house close to the Louvre.

“I tried as well as I could to console or divert him, but the more I
spoke the more he grieved, and weeping answered me nothing, except
“_Seignor_, je suis perdu; _seignor_, je suis ruiné; _seignor_, je suis
misérable.”

Bassompierre begged him to consider that he was a Marshal of France,
and therefore that such lamentations, though worthy of his wife, were
unworthy of him; adding in the candid fashion of the time that although
he had lost an amiable daughter he had yet four nieces, by whose means
he might ally himself with any four great French houses that he might
choose--“and many other things which God inspired me to say.”

“Ah, monsieur,” replied Concini, “I truly mourn my daughter, and shall
mourn her as long as I live. Nevertheless, I am a man able to endure
with constancy a grief such as this; but the ruin of myself and my
wife, my son and my house, which I see before my eyes, and which my
wife’s obstinacy makes inevitable, causes me to lament and to lose
patience.”

He went on to tell Bassompierre the familiar story of his life, curious
enough from his own point of view. According to him, he had been
perfectly happy and prosperous till within the last few months--since,
in fact, to outward view, he had possessed almost sovereign power.
His excitable southern nature was not made to stand firm against the
assaults of fortune, party hatred, popular fury and insult; in all this
he saw warnings from heaven of coming ruin, terrible and complete. On
his knees, he said, he had implored his wife to retire with him to
Italy, where with their immense fortune they could establish themselves
magnificently and leave a fine heritage to their son. But the
Maréchale, with more courage, if also with a more greedy, unsatisfied
ambition, absolutely refused to leave France. It was cowardly and
ungrateful, she said, to think of forsaking the Queen, to whom they
owed their honours and their wealth. “If it were not for my obligations
to my wife,” he said, “I would leave her, and go where neither nobles
of France nor common people would follow and find me.”

Bassompierre went away reflecting how men uplifted by fortune are
often inspired to foresee a coming fall; but also how seldom they have
resolution enough to avoid it.

If Concini was sincere in his wish to leave his dangerous eminence,
this episode throws a tragic light on his conduct during the first
three months of 1617. His insolent bravado at Court and elsewhere
seems now the desperation of an adventurer fighting hopelessly for his
life. It was hardly necessary for M. de Luynes to poison the King’s
mind against the Maréchal d’Ancre; he did it himself. A day seldom
passed without some new insult, some fresh mark of disrespect shown to
Royalty. The Maréchal laughed at the boy, teased him, did not uncover
in his presence. Standing with one or two attendants at a window in the
Louvre, Louis looked down with proud and gloomy eyes on the Maréchal’s
splendid suite as it pranced in the courtyard without a salute to spare
for him. When the King wanted money--which frequently happened, for his
mother did not indulge him in that way or any other--the Maréchal asked
him, with an air of dashing liberality which deeply offended the boy,
why he had not applied to him.

Luynes was an ambitious man, of course; but any loyal servant of the
King would have done well to be angry, and Concini, by refusing him
one of his nieces in marriage, had made a personal enemy of him. While
Louis, sad and bored from childhood, went his melancholy way, catching
little birds, wheeling barrows of turf to make banks in the Tuileries
gardens, his handsome falconer was always there, whispering a deeper
discontent into ears by no means dull. The removal of Concini, his wife
and his parasites, would mean the Queen-mother’s fall from the height
of power she had usurped ever since the King was declared major, thus
ending her regency. It would mean the submission of the rebel princes
and nobles, who were even now declaring themselves, by secret letters
and messages, faithful servants of the King. It would seat Louis XIII.
on his father’s throne.

There was only one way. Louis was at first unwilling that the Maréchal
should be killed. He discussed other plans with Luynes and two or three
confidants. He might escape from Paris to Amboise, where a brother of
Luynes was in command and where his friends might gather round him; or
he might join the princes, taking the command of their forces, which
would thus become his own. These ideas reached the Queen-mother, and
his guards were changed for others whom she could trust. Escape was
made impossible, and from that time Concini was doomed.

Luynes and his fellows, with the King’s full consent, plotted the
affair with M. de Vitry, captain of the guard, a bold, resolute man. On
the morning of Monday, April 24, this officer with a few companions
met Concini at the entrance of the Louvre on his way to pay his daily
visit to the Queen.

“Sir,” said Vitry, “I arrest you, by order of the King.”

“À moi!” cried Concini, laying his hand on his sword; but before his
train of startled courtiers knew what was happening, three of Vitry’s
men had fired their pistols in his face; he fell dead, shot through the
brain.

Not a sword was drawn to avenge him; the words “By order of the King,”
had suddenly recovered their old magic power, and the whole palace
echoed with “Vive le Roi!”

On that fatal morning, the Bishop of Luçon was paying an early visit
to a distinguished doctor of the Sorbonne, one of the rectors of the
University. The news reached the two theologians by means of a third,
who brought it from the Palais de Justice. M. d’Ornano, one of the
conspirators, had been sent there direct from the Louvre to inform the
Parliament of what had happened: such a precaution was necessary, for
Paris was already in an uproar. Rumour cried in the streets that the
young King had been wounded, and by the hand of the Maréchal. The shops
were hastily shut and crowds were pouring towards the Louvre, to meet
the news that the King was well and the Maréchal dead. Then Paris burst
into acclamations of joy.

For the Bishop of Luçon the event was of the most serious consequence,
but he wasted neither time nor words in lamenting his patron.

“I was the more surprised,” he says, “as I had never foreseen that
those who were near the King would be strong enough to design such an
enterprise. I immediately quitted the company of that doctor, famous
both for his teaching and his virtue, who did not forget to say quite
_à propos_ what I might have expected from a man of his learning--as
to the inconstancy of fortune and the uncertainty of all that may seem
most settled in human life.”

On the Pont Neuf, as he drove home, the Bishop met his friend M. du
Tremblay, full of the news, who told him that the King was inquiring
for him. Before presenting himself at the Louvre, he sought out his
terrified colleagues, Mangot and Barbin, who feared the worst for
themselves and for him. It was agreed that they should go one by one,
the Bishop first, to receive His Majesty’s commands.

It was the first really alarming crisis in Richelieu’s life. There is
no doubt that so clever a man must have expected something of the kind,
must have known that the favourite’s tyranny could not last for ever.
It was only a few days indeed since he and Barbin, having discovered
that Concini meant to get rid of them and to replace them with more
submissive Ministers, had privately offered their resignation to the
Queen, who refused to receive it. Also, it seems, with a view to his
own safety, Richelieu had made some advances towards friendship with
M. de Luynes. But, for all that, the moment was dangerous. Both Court
and populace were likely to turn against those who had owed their power
to the dead Maréchal; various threats and warnings had already reached
the ears of Barbin. For Richelieu himself, as he mounted the grand
staircase of the Louvre, the signs were not exactly favourable. “I saw
many faces of those who had caressed me two hours before, and who now
did not recognise me.”

In the great gallery, crowded with courtiers and armed men, young Louis
XIII. was standing on a billiard table, to be seen by all. There is a
picturesque story that he cried out, on seeing the Bishop approach,
“Eh bien, Luçon! me voilà hors de votre tyrannie!” Whatever the boy
may have thought or said, M. de Luynes was not so impolitic as to make
a mortal enemy of the most brilliant man in the kingdom. Mangot might
be scornfully neglected, Barbin might be imprisoned--as they were--but
Luçon seemed worth winning, or at least keeping in the balance till the
King and his mother had arranged their differences.

According to Richelieu’s own account, the King spoke to him
kindly--“saying that he knew I had always loved him (he used those
words) and had taken his part on various occasions, in consideration
of which he would treat me well.” M. de Luynes joined in, with
protestations of friendship. But this was merely personal. When
Richelieu tried to plead for his colleagues, who deserved the royal
favour neither more nor less than himself, Luynes would not listen.
He also replied very coldly to the Bishop’s request to see the
Queen-mother, now strictly guarded in her own rooms.

He gave him to understand, however, that he was still of the royal
Council, and advised him to present himself in the Council-chamber.
Richelieu did so; but only to be treated as an intruder. The old
Ministers, Villeroy, Jeannin and the rest, were already in their
former places, and were deeply engaged in the business of reversing
Richelieu’s policy; while sending despatches to all the provinces, to
the armies, to the rebel princes and to foreign courts with the news
that the King of France had at length come to his own.

It was a curious position for the late Secretary of State. After
standing for a few minutes inside the door, speaking to one or two
councillors, he thought it best to retire quietly, and went home to his
house.

At the Louvre, shut up in her apartments, but still surrounded by her
ladies, the Queen-mother lamented with hard, tearless passion--not the
death of her favourite, which troubled her little, but the loss of her
own authority. Fear of the future and of her son’s vengeance filled her
mind, to the exclusion of every other human feeling. She had no pity
to spare even for the miserable Leonora, her lifelong friend, who was
seized by the guards immediately after her husband’s death, plundered
of all her treasures and imprisoned, first in the Louvre, then in
the Bastille, her son Henry Concini, a boy of thirteen, having been
torn from her. The little Comte de la Pena, as they called him, was a
pretty boy and a famous dancer. The Comte de Fiesque, the young Queen’s
equerry, took him under his protection and brought him to her. Anne
made him dance, fed him with sweetmeats, and kept him in her household
till his fatal name condemned him also to prison. Some time later, he
was set free and sent back to Italy.

The murderers of Concini robbed his dead body of money and jewellery
and left it lying under a staircase in the court of the Louvre,
near the gate through which crowds of Parisians of every rank, who
had trembled before the Maréchal, came crowding to pay their homage
to the King. During the day his house near the Louvre and his wife’s
apartments were completely sacked and pillaged, their flying servants
chased in all directions. In the evening his body was carried secretly
across the way to the Church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois and buried,
with no funeral rites, behind the organ.

But the fury and rage of the mob were far from being satisfied. The
Parisians of 1617 were the ancestors of those of 1793. “The next
morning,” says Pontchartrain, “the 25th of the said month of April,
day of Saint Mark, about ten o’clock, a few women and children, in the
Church of Saint-Germain of the Auxerrois, began to say one to another,
standing over the place where he had been interred: ‘See where they
have buried that tyrant: is it right that he, who did so much evil,
should lie in holy ground and in a church? No, no; out with him; throw
him on a dunghill!’ And exciting each other with such words, they began
with sticks to break up the stone under which the body lay; the women
using knives and scissors, until strong men began to lend a hand. In
less than half an hour two or three hundred persons were assembled;
they raise the stone, take out the body, tie cords round the neck, drag
it out of the church and thence through the streets, with horrible
shouts and yells, some saying it should be thrown into the river,
others that it should be burnt, others that it should be hanged on a
gibbet; each one worse than the last. Thus they found themselves at the
end of the Pont Neuf, where there were two or three gibbets set up.”

Gibbets had been planted here and there in the city by Concini’s
orders, “to frighten those who dared speak ill of him.” To cut the
horrible story short, they hanged his dead body on one of these and
then tore it to pieces with the savagery of wild beasts, burning part
and throwing part into the river.

Richelieu was an eye-witness of these horrors. He was on his way
to visit the Pope’s Nuncio, and his coach drove on to the bridge, a
favourite thoroughfare, to find it a mass of people absorbed in their
dreadful work and “so drunk with fury that there was no means of
getting them to make way for the passage of coaches.”

The Bishop’s coachman was indiscreet enough to take matters with the
usual high hand and to attempt to force his way. One of the men who was
roughly hustled made a loud complaint.

“At that instant,” Richelieu writes, “I saw my peril, in case any one
should cry out that I was a partisan of the Maréchal d’Ancre. To save
myself, after violently threatening my coachman, I asked them what
they were doing, and when they had answered me according to their fury
against the Maréchal, I said to them, ‘You are men who would die to
serve the King: shout, all of you, _Vive le Roi!_’ I led them off, and
thus I gained free passage, and I took good care not to return the same
way; I recrossed by the Pont Notre Dame.”

A few days later, after a painful interview with her son--at which her
stony calm broke down and she wept bitterly--and after formal farewells
from court and city, Marie de Médicis quitted Paris for an honourable
captivity at the Château de Blois. Her younger children took leave of
her at the gate of the city. She was accompanied by a train of faithful
servants, French and Italian, among whom the most distinguished was the
Bishop of Luçon; it was largely owing to his influence with Luynes that
the Queen had not been treated with greater severity.

Two months later, after an unfair and absurd trial, the Maréchale
d’Ancre was beheaded in the Place de Grève and her remains burnt
to ashes. Most of the money, property, and possessions which she
and her husband had accumulated during their years of power was
bestowed upon the King’s friend and favourite, now Duc de Luynes and
Lieutenant-General of Normandy. For his own not very considerable share
in the ruin and death of Concini and his wife, Louis XIII. was rewarded
by the French people with the title of “Le Juste.”

                              CHAPTER VII

                               1617-1619

Richelieu at Blois--He is ordered back to his diocese--He writes
a book in defence of the faith--Marriage of Mademoiselle de
Richelieu--The Bishop exiled to Avignon--Escape of the Queen-mother
from Blois--Richelieu is recalled to her service.

In this swift and sudden way Richelieu fell from power. The position
in which he now found himself was difficult enough. He was the
Queen-mother’s chief friend and confidant in the early days of her
exile at Blois, and the head of her council, but he was surrounded by
mischievous rivals, some Italian, some French, who played him false and
undermined his influence. The Queen’s household, following its royal
mistress’s lead, was all plot and intrigue, delusion and fury. Almost
the only wise person, besides Richelieu himself, was his old friend
Madame de Guercheville, Marie’s lady of honour. She, at least, saw good
cause for the Bishop of Luçon’s endeavour to keep the little captive
Court at Blois in favour with the Court of the Louvre by a constant
and civil correspondence with the almighty Luynes. She saw the force
of the Bishop’s reasoning--that the actual state of things must be
accepted--that the King was the King, and his subjects, including his
mother, might as well rebel against Heaven. Therefore Richelieu was
doing his best for Her Majesty--and incidentally for himself too--by
representing her and her servants as absolutely devoted to the service
of the King.

It is natural enough that Luynes, listening to Richelieu’s enemies, was
not inclined to trust him, either as to the Queen-mother’s peaceable
loyalty or his own. But he made no mistake as to the Bishop’s political
genius; and therefore, it seems, he decided to deprive the Queen-mother
of his services.

The intrigue is not very clear, even to this day. Richelieu had a
letter from his brother, the Marquis, warning him that the King was
displeased with him and that he would shortly be ordered to retire to
his diocese. Afterwards it appeared that the information, conveyed
by friends at Court to Henry de Richelieu, was false, or at least
premature. But the Bishop acted on it without delay. Knowing that Marie
would not willingly part with him, he asked for a fortnight’s leave of
absence and went to the Château de Richelieu. From thence he wrote to
the King and to Luynes, protesting his loyalty and complaining of the
calumnies of his enemies. The King sent a cold reply, advising him to
attend to the duties of his diocese and to remain within its bounds
till further orders.

Marie de Médicis was passionately angry, and wrote furious letters
to her son and the favourite. It was treating her not like a mother,
but like a slave, she said, thus to affront her by removing her most
capable servant. But her bitter complaints were of no avail.

Richelieu resigned himself in a more dignified fashion. Every
action of his life must be considered in view of the fact that
he was a politician of extraordinary cleverness, with clear eyes
fixed unchangeably on the future of power which he always meant to
attain. For five months, under most troublesome circumstances, he had
practically ruled France. He had built his castle eagerly, swiftly,
successfully; and then a far less clever man, by whispering into the
ready ear of a boy, had shaken it to the ground. It had been built,
of course, on the wrong foundation: the Bishop of Luçon had plenty of
time to reflect, as he sat among his books at Coussay, on the too late
realised truth that divinity hedged a king, that Louis XIII. was the
master.

It is doing Richelieu no injustice to suggest that if he had been
well received in the King’s Council-chamber on that tragic April 24,
he might never have followed the Queen-mother to Blois. His sincere
admirer, M. Avenel, says, “His first thoughts were given to the Court
and the Ministry; only his second to exile and the Queen: ambitious
by temperament, generous from necessity, the seeming heroism of his
fidelity in misfortune reduces itself to this.”

And that very semblance of heroic fidelity was probably based on the
calculation that Marie de Médicis, being the King’s mother and a person
not easily crushed or ignored, would be reconciled to her son before
many months had passed by. That Richelieu had any real feeling for her
beyond the banal devotion of a courtier seems exceedingly doubtful. He
was a hard creature, made of steel and flame, and Marie, a dozen years
older than himself, was not an attractive woman. The hasty retreat from
Blois was no personal grief to him.

In short, Richelieu now set himself to please--or rather, not to
displease--Louis XIII., on whose favour his fortunes so clearly
depended. His faith in the future never really deserted him, though for
seven years, like Jacob, he served and waited in the wilderness.

During that first summer, at his pleasant priory of Coussay, he wrote a
book.

The worthy Père Cotton, the Jesuit confessor of Henry IV. and Louis
XIII., had been dismissed by Luynes. His successor, the Père Arnoux,
a much less discreet personage, preached a violent sermon before the
King against the Protestants, accusing them of misunderstanding and
misinterpreting the Bible. Four ministers of Charenton, learned men,
published a spirited reply, which was suppressed by royal order, after
discussions in the Sorbonne and the Parliament. But the Huguenots
boasted loudly that the Catholics could not defend themselves, and it
appeared to the Bishop of Luçon that indeed the Church had supplied no
remedy to save souls from the evil effects of reading “that pernicious
book.”

“Therefore,” he says, “I employed the leisure of my solitude in
answering it; and owing to the length of time during which I had been
diverted from the exercise of my profession, I laboured with such
ardour that in six weeks I finished the work.”

This Defence of the Catholic Faith was a book of 250 pages, full
of theological learning, and written with moderation, tact, and
practical good sense. The Bishop here preached again those doctrines
of toleration, of conversion by reasoning, not by force, with which
he had met the Huguenots of his diocese ten years before. It was the
book of a statesman as much as of a theologian. He marshalled an
army of arguments to prove the ministers in the wrong; enjoined on
the schismatics loyalty and obedience to the laws; but for the King
he advised gentleness and patience; the object to be sought by all
being national unity and peace. The book was printed at Poitiers, and
published within three months of its beginning. It was greatly admired,
and added much to its author’s reputation; but also, as he notes rather
sadly, “it burdened me with envy.” His enemies saw that they had not
silenced the Bishop of Luçon by banishing him to his diocese.

There, during these months of enforced residence, he seems to have
worked with all the freshness and “ardour” consequent on absence and
change of thoughts. He writes in August to the Nuncio: “I am here in my
diocese, where I try to make known by all my actions that I have and
shall have no other passion than doing all I can for the glory of God.”
A word of personal complaint in his letters is rare. He was surrounded
by his friends, living in a pleasant and healthy little château where
the people loved him. Sébastien Bouthillier was now Dean of Luçon and
his constant companion. He had his books, collected in the days when
he, La Rocheposay, Saint-Cyran and the rest found their diversion in
study; and if all these things were not the passion of his life, yet
he loved them still. He might have been far more of a bookworm than
he really was, from the tone of his letters at this time. “I live at
a little hermitage among books” ... “I am living quietly here in the
enjoyment of my books” ... “Serving God and my friends, I am resolved
to spend the time quietly among my books and my neighbours;” and much
more of the same kind. Now and then, it is true, when news from the
great outside world comes to him, sitting helpless in his hermitage, he
is seized with restless impatience and confesses himself _malheureux_.
But this is only in letters to his own family and to his friend Père
Joseph: the face turned to the King and to all public personages is
dignified, grave and serene.

Richelieu watched, from distance and obscurity, the still rising
fortunes of the Duc de Luynes. The lucky Provençal, of doubtful
nobility, was able to choose a wife among the noblest, richest and
most beautiful women in France. He refused Mademoiselle de Vendôme,
Henry IV.’s daughter--who afterwards married the Duc d’Elbeuf--probably
from fear and dislike of her odious brother. He would have nothing to
say to Mademoiselle d’Ailly and her enormous fortune, but arranged a
marriage for her with his younger brother Cadenet, a dashing soldier,
who took the title of Duc de Chaulnes from one of her estates. His own
choice fell on Marie de Rohan, daughter of the Duc de Montbazon, then a
lovely wild girl of seventeen. After his death she married the Duc de
Chevreuse, a younger brother of the Duc de Guise, and was for years the
most admired beauty and most mischievous woman in Europe.

Another piece of news was the removal of the Prince de Condé, “ce petit
brouillon,” whom Luynes had not dared to set free, from the Bastille to
the Château de Vincennes. His wife, Charlotte de Montmorency, was now
allowed to share his imprisonment, and the consequence was the birth
of Princess Anne-Geneviève de Bourbon, afterwards the famous Madame de
Longueville. Louis de Bourbon, the great Condé, was not born till after
his father’s release.

Later in the year, the Duc de Villeroy died at seventy-four. He was one
of the best of those old Ministers of State whom Henry IV. left to his
widow, the Regent. The Pope’s Nuncio, Bentivoglio, had a high opinion
of him. “Great was his experience, great his integrity; ... a good
Frenchman and a good Catholic,” says the Italian diplomat. Richelieu
describes him as a sincere man of good judgment, but narrow-minded and
jealous, and adds that he died after fifty-one years’ service with
clean hands, possessing little more than he had inherited from his
fore-fathers. It was a fine testimonial to Villeroy from the young
rival who, if only for a few months, had thrown him into the shade.

Richelieu was less generous with regard to Jacques-Auguste de Thou, the
“faithful and austere,” “light of France” and “prince of historians,”
as Camden called him, who died in that same year. Richelieu observes
of him that his piety was not equal to his learning, that knowledge
and action are different things, and that the speculative science of
government needs certain qualities of mind not always found to match
it. The inwardness of this criticism lies in the fact that de Thou, in
his Latin History of the sixteenth century, made certain scornful and
severe remarks on Richelieu’s ancestors and the part they took in the
Wars of Religion. Richelieu, exceedingly sensitive as to the honour
of his family, never forgave this, and when in 1642 François-Auguste
de Thou lost his head in the Cinq-Mars catastrophe, it was currently
believed that the Cardinal might have spared him but for those
paragraphs in his father’s history.

In November 1617 Nicole du Plessis-Richelieu, the Bishop’s younger
sister, was married quietly in Paris to a distinguished but eccentric
Angevin noble, the Marquis de Maillé-Brézé. Nicole was now a woman
of thirty. She had lived at Richelieu until her mother’s death; her
portion cannot have been large; of her brothers, one was a more or less
struggling courtier, one a monk, one a politician out of office. She
possessed little beyond a singular beauty and charm; the Marquis de
Brézé, who married her for love, cannot have foreknown the brilliant
thing he was doing. Brother-in-law to the most powerful man in Europe,
father-in-law of the great Condé, Marshal of France, governor of Anjou,
Viceroy of Catalonia, the Marquis had everything; and, “extravagant”
as he was, cared most of all for a good dog and a new book. But the
marriage turned out unhappily. Nicole de Richelieu went out of her
mind--one of her mad fancies being that she was made of glass--and died
shut up in the castle of Saumur. M. de Brézé was a bad husband, though
a clever and accomplished man. According to the stories of the time, it
was his unkindness and brutal infidelity that upset poor Nicole’s weak
brain.

The Bishop, of course, was not present at his sister’s marriage; but he
appears to have made all the necessary arrangements with M. de Brézé,
leaving the actual ceremony to be managed by Henry de Richelieu and his
young wife.

The Duc de Luynes was nervous on his lonely pinnacle of power. The
presence of the Queen-mother at Blois was a constant anxiety to him;
she was not only, in his eyes, an enemy to the State, but his own
personal and unforgiving enemy. And more than the Queen-mother he
feared her friends; certain of the great nobles, who were already
beginning to resent his exaltation, and those former ministers who had
been the real strength of her rule. Barbin was still in the Bastille.
With an appearance of leniency, Luynes made his imprisonment easier and
winked at a correspondence between him and the Queen. Copies of every
letter came into the hands of Luynes. Marie’s messengers boasted of
their mistress’s new freedom and speedy return to the Court.

These intrigues, dangerous from Luynes’ point of view, came to a sudden
end. Barbin, strictly imprisoned, nearly lost his head; many arrests
were made; two or three poor creatures who had written pamphlets on
the Queen’s side were cruelly put to death; Marie’s own imprisonment
was made much more rigorous, royal guards and royal spies with new and
strict orders being set to watch the Château de Blois.

Thus setting himself to terrorise the Queen-mother and her friends,
Luynes did not forget the Bishop of Luçon. On Wednesday in Holy
Week, 1618, Richelieu received a letter from the King full of vague
accusations of “goings and comings and secret proceedings which
caused umbrage and suspicion, affecting the King’s service and the
tranquillity of his subjects,” ordering him to retire immediately to
Avignon, there to remain till further commands.

“I was not surprised at receiving this despatch,” he says in his
_Memoirs_, “having always expected unjust, barbarous and unreasonable
treatment from the cowards who governed us.... But as I was accused of
acting against His Majesty’s service, I humbly begged him to send some
dispassionate person to examine the facts on the spot, being sure that
by such means His Majesty would be convinced of my innocence.”

It does not appear indeed that Richelieu had been much concerned, if at
all, in the recent intrigues between Blois and Paris. But Luynes was
afraid of him; and he was forced to depart instantly for that exile
which was the saddest experience of his younger life--proving once more
the old truth that the night is darkest before the dawn.

He left Luçon on Good Friday, for the royal commands admitted of no
delay, and started on the long, difficult, cross-country journey from
Poitou to the Venaissin. In wind-swept Avignon, still a half-Italian
city belonging to the Pope, he hired a house and settled himself to
endure the cruel idleness of banishment. He was not alone. His brother
and brother-in-law, M. de Richelieu and M. du Pont-de-Courlay, shared
his exile, for they too were old adherents of the Queen-mother, and
Luynes feared them all. He shut up his captive birds in the same
cage--“a great consolation to us,” says the Bishop, “though it was not
done for that end, but in order to keep us in sight together.”

Once more he flung himself into hard study. He wrote or dictated a
large collection of fragmentary notes, which took the form of a kind
of apology or explanation of his political views and doings. He wrote
a religious book, _L’Instruction du Chrétien_, planned long before.
He seems to have led a solitary and studious life, seeing few people,
writing few letters except to his diocese, meditating much and
suffering much, for he was ill in body as in mind.

And in the autumn the gloom of exile was deepened by severe family
sorrows. The young Marquise de Richelieu, Marguerite Guiot des
Charmeaux, whom her husband had been obliged to leave behind, died at
Richelieu after the birth of her first child. The little boy, François
Louis, only lived a few weeks, and was then laid in the vault at Braye
with his mother and his ancestors. It was not long before Henry de
Richelieu himself joined that company.

He was terribly grieved and desolate. Every glimpse that we have of his
wife shows her good and charming, and the blows of fortune may well
have seemed to both brothers too heavy to bear. The child’s death meant
the extinction of the direct male line of du Plessis-Richelieu.

After some weeks, by the intervention of their old friend Bassompierre,
the Marquis and his brother-in-law M. du Pont-de-Courlay were allowed
to go to Richelieu and to Paris on their family business. The Bishop
remained alone at Avignon.

His solitude there was of his own choice, for the Vice-Legate and
other dignitaries were ready to make much of him, and a letter to
his brother, written in February 1619, shows him very sensible of
some special kindness. He commissions M. de Richelieu to buy and
to send him the most beautiful hackney he can find--“mais belle
tout-à-fait”--probably such a gentle, ambling creature as a Vice-Legate
would ride--as well as pieces of choice goldsmith’s work to hang
on watches. His anxiety is that the presents should be “something
conformable to his condition,” for it is better to give nothing at all
than “un maigre présent.” The Bishop of Luçon, in poverty and exile,
had already the splendid tastes of the Éminentissime.

But in actual fact he was very solitary and intensely sad. For once in
his life he seems to have lost faith in his star, and as the conviction
that he would die in exile gained strength, he thought a good deal of
the poor little diocese he might never see again. He wrote a curious
document, a kind of last will, dated February 8, and addressed to
the Chapter of Luçon. After some expressions of sincere affection, he
leaves his body to the Cathedral, “that I may repose when dead in the
same place where, living, I desire to be....”

“... The place of my sepulture shall be, if you please, immediately
above the singers’ desk, leaving the higher part of the choir, as more
honourable, for those who shall come after me....

“I leave you also all the silver plate of my chapel, my ornaments, and
hangings of Flemish tapestry, to adorn the choir, without any condition
whatever, trusting to be helped by your prayers....

“If I could leave you anything more, I would very willingly do so; my
will surpassing my power, my wishes for you must supply the defect.

“The first benefit I wish you is to live in clear consciousness of your
condition, keeping before your eyes that this world is but illusion,
and that there is no profit or contentment except in the service of
God, who never forsakes them who serve Him.

“I desire for you a bishop who, equalling me in affection, may surpass
me in all other qualities.... I conjure him, whoever he may be, to
reside with you, to visit his diocese, to encourage in their duty, by
his example and his teaching, those who have the care of souls under
him, to maintain and augment the seminary founded at Luçon, to which I
leave a thousand _livres_ and my whole library....”

To this seminary for priests, a favourite foundation of his, Richelieu
had already given the revenues of an abbey in Poitou. He ends his
testament by beseeching the Chapter to live in the closest union with
his successor.

“After this, Sirs, it only remains to conjure you to love my memory as
that of a person who tenderly loves you and passionately desires your
salvation.”

Richelieu’s final farewell to the Luçon Chapter was written four years
later, in less affectionate and more businesslike terms. He was about
to be plunged in the political whirlpool which swallowed the rest
of his life, when he resigned the see in favour of M. de Bragelogne,
receiving in exchange the Abbey of Notre Dame du Wast in the diocese of
Le Mans, a canonry and prebend at St. Martin of Tours, and a retiring
pension of 6,000 _livres_.

The town of Blois was asleep in the dark small hours of February 23,
when Queen Marie de Médicis got out of her window in the Château,
climbed or slid down a hundred and twenty feet of ladders--a really
wonderful feat in a woman of her size and indolence--hurried through
the silent streets to the bridge over the Loire, got into a coach with
two or three attendants and some boxes of money and jewels, and drove
off, first to Loches, then to Angoulême. When Blois, castle and town,
awoke in the morning, the captive royal bird had flown.

The affair had been arranged, with extraordinary cleverness and
secrecy, by the Abbé Rucellai, one of those Italians in Marie’s
household whose intrigues had brought about the disgrace of Richelieu.
The active agent was the old Duc d’Épernon.

He had been a courtier of Henry III. and Henry IV., and had not yet
taken up arms in actual rebellion. It was he who stood by Marie de
Médicis after the death of Henry, and faced the Parliament with a
fierce declaration of her right to the Regency. She had not been
grateful: the Maréchal d’Ancre took the place in her court which
d’Épernon considered his due. Too proud for a lower position, he
retired to his estates and governments, which were many, including the
town of Metz, Saintonge, and the Angoumois. The rule of Luynes was
quite as offensive to him as that of Concini had been, and the plot for
the Queen’s escape was welcomed by one of the boldest, most romantic
and adventurous characters of the century.

When the time drew near, the Duke was at Metz. It was necessary to
gain the Angoumois by a secret dash across France, beset with so many
dangers that the chroniclers called that ride “le voyage d’Amadis.” His
province successfully reached, the Duke sent two active young men to
Blois to manage the actual escape, and himself waited for the Queen at
Loches, then conveying her to a place of greater safety. She was now
free to make terms with her son or to set France on fire against him.

The Duc de Luynes heard of Her Majesty’s “sortie” with amazement and
alarm. He had long watched her uneasily; and his brother afterwards
told Richelieu that he had resolved to take the King to Blois on the
pretext of a friendly visit, but really to convey the Queen-mother
“politely” to Amboise, his own stronghold, where “she would remain for
the future under good and sure guard.” He knew well that her quarrel
with him grew more bitter with every month of her captivity. During
that very winter he had married her second daughter, Madame Christine,
to the Prince of Piedmont, the Duke of Savoy’s son, with scarcely the
formal courtesy of asking her consent. Such an insult Marie was not
likely to forget.

Once at liberty, she might become the rallying centre for all the
discontented in the kingdom, and Luynes knew that they were many. He
had offended the nobles by withdrawing various pensions, and had set
the great Protestant party against him by royal decrees, especially
one which aimed at restoring Catholic worship in the little kingdom of
Béarn.

For a few days civil war seemed imminent. The King and Luynes, both
furiously angry, began to raise troops, and talked of riding off to the
west. But Luynes was not Concini. He was prudent _au fond_, some say
timid, and no soldier. He began to ask advice from wiser men in Paris
and elsewhere, even from the Duc de Bouillon, head of the Protestants,
and they all with one voice counselled peace. Besides, the nobles
showed no great eagerness to rebel suddenly against the King by joining
the Queen-mother and d’Épernon, while Marie’s letters to her son gave
a kind of basis for negotiations. It was resolved to throw the actual
blame of the affair on d’Épernon, and a royal edict at once deprived
him of all his appointments and governments, while ambassadors,
carefully chosen to please the Queen, were sent to her at Angoulême.
It seemed possible that such persuasive tongues as those of her old
favourite the Père de Bérulle and of the Comte de Béthune, Sully’s more
courtly brother and a devoted servant of Henry IV., might induce her to
accept the terms offered by her son to renounce the company of rebels
against his authority, and to choose a peaceable residence in some
other part of the kingdom.

There were those in Paris at the moment who did not wait for the
failure of these negotiations to suggest an even wiser plan. One man
in France could manage the Queen-mother: he was in exile at Avignon.
Restore him to her council; give him authority to mediate between her
and the King; his cleverness and moderation would soon bring her to
a less violent frame of mind, and so arrange matters to the King’s
satisfaction.

The originators of this idea were Richelieu’s two faithful friends, the
Dean of Luçon and Père Joseph.

The wonderful friar had been much away from France during Richelieu’s
exile. He had been to Rome and to Spain, travelling mostly on foot,
as the rule of his Order required. He had been working hard on the
details of a new crusade against the Turks, with the object not only of
rescuing the Holy Places, but of driving Islam out of Europe. It was
the favourite dream of Joseph’s life. He worked at its realisation in
concert with the Duc de Nevers, Charles de Gonzague, who was descended,
through his mother, from the Christian emperors of the East. These two,
with the Pope’s sanction, founded a crusading order of chivalry, “La
Milice Chrétienne,” and before the Thirty Years War broke out their
scheme had become popular throughout Catholic Europe. But it was an
anachronism, a mediæval romance, and as such it soon died away. The
two camps of Christendom had each other to fight. The revolt of the
Bohemian Protestants sealed the fate of Constantinople and Palestine.

Père Joseph’s crusading ardour was equalled by his devotion to
Richelieu. He and Bouthillier worked so well on the minds of Luynes
and of the King that it was decided to recall the Bishop from his
exile and to send him to join the Queen-mother at Angoulême, with
the understanding that while faithfully serving Her Majesty he would
counsel nothing against the King’s interest and the nation’s welfare.
The letter of recall was written by Louis XIII.’s own hand, and was
conveyed to Avignon by M. du Tremblay, Père Joseph’s brother. Riding
post-haste, he arrived there on March 7, 1619.

Here Richelieu may tell his own story.

“As soon as I had received His Majesty’s despatch, though the weather
was extraordinarily bad, the snow deep and the cold extreme, I posted
away from Avignon to obey my orders, led both by inclination and duty.
But my haste was soon interrupted, for in a little wood near Vienne I
fell in with a troop of thirty men of the Sieur d’Alincourt’s guards,
commanded by his captain of the guard, who met me with arms lowered,
saying that they had orders to arrest me. I begged the captain to show
me his powers, but he was provided with none. He replied to me that he
was executing the orders of the Sieur d’Alincourt, who had his orders
from the King....”

The Bishop’s impatient rage may be imagined. He was also greatly
alarmed, for it was only too possible that the King might have changed
his mind. Resistance was out of the question. M. du Tremblay rode off
to Lyons, where M. d’Alincourt was governor--he was the son of the Duc
de Villeroy, and had befriended Richelieu in his young days--in order
to find out which of the royal commands was the latest in date. The
Bishop and his servants were conveyed by the soldiers to Vienne, the
stupid captain treating his prisoner “like a criminal.” A sleepless
night at the inn was made more hideous by bands of men fighting in the
streets; a sham rescue, it seems, was devised by the captain for the
greater credit of himself and his men. No wonder that the Bishop was
exceedingly angry. “I thought you were ignorant,” said he, “but I now
see you are malicious.”

In the meanwhile, M. du Tremblay had laid the King’s letter before the
governor of Lyons, who perceived that he had made a mistake. It had
arisen from a morsel of gossip sent him by his son, who was at court
when the news of the Queen’s escape arrived, and to whom the Duc de
Luynes had hurriedly said--“If your father could arrest the Bishop of
Luçon, he would do us a great pleasure.” Luynes probably forgot the
words, spoken before the idea of making use of the Bishop as a mediator
had even been suggested; but M. d’Alincourt made haste to act upon
them, sending spies to Avignon and cleverly arranging the enterprise,
“which was not a very difficult one,” observes Richelieu, “there being
question only of stopping a man travelling alone.”

The governor did his best to “change his rigour into civility.” He sent
his coach to meet the Bishop on his way to Lyons, with a letter to
his captain, who was much astonished and ashamed. Richelieu showed no
resentment. He easily forgave the captain, dined with M. d’Alincourt at
Lyons, and then pursued his journey. Its risks were not over, for the
snow lay deep in the high wild country between Lyons and Limoges, and
the King’s troops, who were abroad in those parts, pursued the Bishop
for some distance, supposing him to be the Duc d’Épernon’s son, the
Archbishop of Toulouse.

Richelieu arrived at Angoulême on March 27, after a journey of more
than three weeks. It was again Wednesday in Holy Week. According to his
own account he was not made welcome, except by Madame de Guercheville.
The Duc d’Épernon and his party looked on him with doubt and suspicion
as an emissary of the King. Marie de Médicis, surrounded by them,
hardly dared to show her feelings of relief and joy.

                             CHAPTER VIII

                               1619-1622

The Treaty of Angoulême--The death of Henry de Richelieu--The meeting
at Couzières--The Queen-mother at Angers--Richelieu’s influence
for peace--The Battle of the Ponts-de-Cé--Intrigues of the Duc de
Luynes--Marriage of Richelieu’s niece--The campaigns in Béarn and
Languedoc--The death of Luynes--The Bishop of Luçon becomes a Cardinal.

Neither the Duc d’Épernon’s haughty reserve nor the Abbé Rucellai’s
malignant dislike and envy could long affect Richelieu’s place among
the Queen-mother’s counsellors. The Treaty of Angoulême was his work,
in concert with the King’s ambassadors, Bérulle, Béthune, the Cardinal
de la Rochefoucauld, and last, not least, Père Joseph. On both sides
the past was to be forgotten; Marie was to live where she chose and
to dispose freely of her revenues; all her partisans were restored to
the places and honours of which royal edicts had deprived them. On the
other hand, she gave up the government of Normandy for the smaller
one of Anjou, with 600,000 crowns in money, and the Duc d’Épernon was
obliged to renounce Boulogne, for which he received an indemnity of
50,000 crowns. It was thought that the Queen and her party had the
best of the bargain, and every one, even the Duc d’Épernon, gave the
Bishop of Luçon credit for the compromise. He had still bitter enemies
among the Queen’s _entourage_, but he had also firm friends, and the
best of these was his brother Henry, distinguished alike as soldier
and courtier, on whom the Queen immediately bestowed the military
government of her chief town and castle of Angers. She thus gravely
displeased her more greedy and restless servants, men who preferred
active rebellion with its chances to peace and loyalty. The Abbé
Rucellai was leader among them, and the Marquis de Thémines, captain
of the Queen’s guard, was one of the most ambitious. Various insulting
remarks made by him came to the ears of the Marquis de Richelieu; the
consequence was a duel, in which Henry de Richelieu fell, stabbed to
the heart.

“Death took him,” writes his brother, “but not so suddenly but that the
Sieur de Bérulle, who chanced to be passing by, had time to give him
absolution.”

It was the sharpest grief that ever touched Richelieu. The two had been
much drawn together of late years, and they seemed at this very time to
be starting together on a fresh and brilliant career.

The Marquis de Thémines disappeared in disgrace from the Queen’s
circle, but others of his party were ready to snatch at the government
of Angers and the command of the guards. They were disappointed. Marie
de Médicis replaced the dead Richelieu by his uncle, Amador de la
Porte, Commander of the Order of Malta, the worthy and gallant man to
whom young Armand de Richelieu owed his early education as collegian
and cadet. The captaincy of the guard was given to the Marquis de
Brézé, whose son Armand, afterwards Duc de Fronsac, was born about this
time.

Rucellai and his partisans, seeing themselves out-generalled, vanished
one by one and left a clear field to the Bishop of Luçon, whose
commanding influence grew every day stronger with the Queen.

A meeting and formal reconciliation between herself and her son became
now the question of the moment. In preparation either for this or for
the chance of civil war the Court had already moved from Paris, with
a strong escort of troops, to the Loire. The first stopping-place
was Amboise, where the King received news that the treaty had been
concluded. At Angoulême bonfires blazed and a _Te Deum_ was sung; at
Tours, where the Court proceeded to establish itself for the summer,
things were taken more quietly, perhaps more cynically, for the royal
interview was put off from month to month, and Luynes found that he
had a formidable person to deal with in the Queen’s chief counsellor.
Though the treaty might be signed, there were further arrangements to
be made before Richelieu would allow his royal mistress to meet her son.

In the meanwhile there was going and coming between Tours and
Angoulême, where the Prince of Piedmont and his young wife, with his
brother, Prince Thomas of Savoy, visited the Queen-mother and were
magnificently received by her loyal friend the Duc d’Épernon.

The long hot summer dragged slowly on. The young King and Queen,
Monsieur (Gaston, Duc d’Orléans, a boy of eleven), the little Princess
Henriette, the Duc de Luynes and the whole Court, passed the time as
best they could among the woods and rivers of Touraine and Anjou. They
visited La Flèche, where the heart of Henry IV. lay in the chapel
of the Jesuit College founded by him--and where its ashes are still
preserved, the embalmed heart itself having been burnt by patriots in
the Revolution. They made a progress among stately sun-baked châteaux,
lingering at Le Lude, the owner of which, formerly the patron of
Luynes and his brothers, now held the important post of governor to
Monsieur. Some of the courtiers, such as Bassompierre, found reasons
for riding backwards and forwards, post-haste, between Tours and Paris.
The Ministers there needed watching, being apt to sell rich military
appointments on their own authority.

At length Richelieu could delay no longer. He had gained for the
Queen-mother some additional advantages beyond the April treaty, and
he had extracted from Luynes a kind of vague promise, or at least
an understanding, that he should be recommended to the Pope for a
Cardinal’s Hat. At present this was his chief object and desire.

At the end of August Marie de Médicis left Angoulême to rejoin her
son. She was accompanied to the frontier of the Angoumois by the Duc
d’Épernon, from whom she parted with tears, and she was escorted on her
journey by Hercule de Rohan, Duc de Montbazon, father-in-law of Luynes,
whose château of Couzières, near Tours, had been chosen for the royal
meeting. It was not large or important, being rather a country-house
than a castle; but its woods and gardens were beautiful, and never, in
a history not lacking in romance, was Couzières the scene of so much
splendour.

The Queen-mother arrived there in the evening, with her train of ladies
and gentlemen, among whom were the Archbishop of Toulouse and the
Bishop of Luçon. The King left Tours the next morning on horseback,
attended by five hundred princes, lords and gentlemen.

“He arrived at the said Couzières before the Queen-mother had ordered
her dinner; he entered by the park gate, and the Queen at once came
forth to receive him. She met him in the garden, and there they saluted
and embraced each other with a great appearance of contentment on both
sides; the Queen-mother wept for joy.”

According to tradition, they found little to say to each other. “My
son has grown taller since I saw him,” said Marie. “For your service,
Madame,” said Louis.

They walked together, surrounded by crowds, to the house, and then,
while the Queen dined, Louis strolled in the garden. Later on, another
splendid cavalcade arrived from Tours--that of the reigning Queen, who
“made her compliments with many demonstrations of joy” and accompanied
the Queen-mother in her coach to Tours, the King flying his hawks in
the open country by the way.

Marie’s visit to the Court at Tours was not a success. The precedence
taken by Anne of Austria offended her. And Luynes was playing a
double game. He wanted the reconciliation, which would rid him of an
independent adversary; he wanted to work a separation between Marie and
the nobles of her party, especially the powerful Duc d’Épernon; but
he watched with a jealous eye any appearance of a real understanding
between her and the King. As to her friends and servants, he gave
them fair words and played them false at every turn. His conduct,
dishonest or diplomatic, may be judged by the fact that while the King
was writing to the Pope to request that the Archbishop of Toulouse and
the Bishop of Luçon should be promoted to be cardinals, Luynes was
giving the Court of Rome to understand, by a secret despatch, that only
the first name mentioned by the King need be taken in earnest. These
“sourdes et déloyales pratiques,” as M. Avenel calls them, continued
for many months, and Richelieu had few powerful advocates. Cardinal du
Perron was dead; and Cardinal Bentivoglio, the Nuncio, remarked coldly
on the extravagance of the Queen-mother’s demand and “la sfrenata
ambizione di Lusson.”

The Court left Tours on its return to Paris towards the end of
September. The King wished his mother to accompany him, but she
refused, choosing first to take formal possession of her government
of Anjou. Travelling by way of Chinon, and lingering a few days at
the stately castle on the Vienne, which had been made over to her
by treaty, and was commanded by the Seigneur de Chanteloube, one of
her most violent partisans, she received news which deepened her
displeasure and suspicion with regard to the Duc de Luynes. Her younger
son’s governor, the Comte du Lude, had died of fever at Tours, and
now, without a word to her, Colonel d’Ornano, a creature of Luynes and
a quite unfit man for the charge, was appointed in his stead. Another
piece of news, sprung upon the Queen-mother without consultation or
formal announcement, was that of the release of the Prince of Condé,
her own and Richelieu’s enemy, from Vincennes, and his reception by the
King, with a royal declaration blaming those who had brought about his
captivity. This may have been aimed at the Maréchal d’Ancre, but it
struck the Queen. Marie understood that the first prince of the blood
was now to be played off against herself in Luynes’ game.

She was magnificently received at Angers. The citizens of that noble
old town were as warlike, independent and keenly political now as in
the days of King John, and quite as unwilling to “open wide their
gates” to any unpopular sovereign. They had been amusing themselves
during that summer by rioting against their excellent bishop, Fouquet
de la Varenne, on some matter of ecclesiastical discipline. Commander
de la Porte, with all his courage and loyalty, was not quite the man
to manage “this peevish town.” He was a good-tempered chatterbox.
Before the Queen’s entrance into the city, Richelieu wrote a long
letter to “my dear Uncle,” in which, after a number of practical
details as to arms and provisions, he recommended gravity and dignity
in dealing with the _bourgeoisie_.

All went well on October 16, when Marie took formal possession of
her city of Angers. Thousands of people received her with immense
rejoicings. There was a grand military display, martial music and
ringing of bells, as the Queen approached, having crossed the long
arches and causeways of the Ponts-de-Cé. She did not lodge in the
gloomy old castle, where Henry II. of England once held his court, but
in the most beautiful house in the town, the Logis Barrault, now known
to travellers as the Museum of Angers. There a Court soon gathered
round her, increasing in numbers from day to day.

This state of things continued through the winter and the spring. Over
and over again the King invited his mother to Paris; but she and her
intimate counsellors found little satisfaction in the assurances sent
by Luynes of the royal good-will. The promises went hand in hand with
too many slights and affronts; and though Richelieu, according to his
own account, believed the Queen-mother’s right place to be at her son’s
Court, and though he felt that his own future lay there, he hesitated
to press his opinion against that of the majority of her friends. He
could not fail to see, as they did, that “there was much to be feared
in the power of the favourites.”

Luynes and his brothers were the first men in France. As to personal
character, though spoilt by success, these three Provençal adventurers
were good fellows enough; but as to greediness and ambition, Concini
himself had not gone further. In order to be independent of the King’s
favour, Luynes had contrived to get most of the strong frontier towns
of France into his hands. His brothers, one of them a Marshal of
France, married two of the richest heiresses in the kingdom and took
their place among the highest nobility.

“You would say,” writes Richelieu in his _Memoirs_, “that France exists
for them alone; that for them she abounds in all kinds of riches....
The governments and places that they hold seem in small proportion to
those they consider their due; ... what is not to be had for money
they take by violence; ... for their private bargains they make use of
the money raised from the people for the public good. In a word, if
the whole of France were to be sold, _ils achèteroient la France de la
France même_.”

Add to all this the insolent, boasting speeches which came to the
Queen-mother’s ears, the complaints of the King’s own Ministers and
of the Parliament of Paris, who liked the new favourites no better
than the old, and the anger of the nobles who found their pensions
unpaid and the best appointments snatched from their teeth;--it was not
amazing either that Marie hesitated as to leaving her town and Court
in the west to place herself, personally, in the power of Messieurs de
Luynes, or that Richelieu was slow in advising her to do so.

In May and June 1620 the governors of provinces were openly showing
their discontent. The Duc de Vendôme could dispose of Brittany, the
Duc de Longueville of Normandy, the Duc de Mayenne of Guyenne; and
these three, with many others, left the Court and retired to their
governments, where they began to prepare for civil war. The Duc de
Rohan, in the name of the Protestant party, went so far as to advise
the Queen-mother to leave Angers for Bordeaux and to assemble an army
in the South. One of the chief malcontents, the Comtesse de Soissons,
furious at the release of her cousin and enemy, the Prince de Condé,
left Paris with her young son and came to Angers. As the summer
advanced, the Queen having decided to hold her own in the west, many
of _les grands_ followed Madame la Comtesse, and Marie was surrounded
by a crowd of restless, warlike nobles and princes, who were held back
with difficulty from declaring open and instant war upon the King. Half
France, apparently, was on her side--princes, populations, Catholics,
Huguenots, and men of law: at one moment a successful campaign against
the King and Luynes seemed a certainty, and Angers was the centre of
enthusiastic military preparations.

But Richelieu was there--a power behind all the discontented swaggerers
of Her Majesty’s Court. A small, strong party, including the Queen
herself, believed in him. He had taken care that his friends should
hold the places nearest to her: Claude Bouthillier, brother of his
faithful Sébastien, was at this time her secretary. The clergy, who
always influenced Marie de Médicis, were with him to a man.

He did not intend that the misunderstandings between the Queen-mother
and the King, hardly mended by the passing reconciliation at Couzières,
should come to actual war. It was he who prevented the move to
the South; he who, through all these months at Angers, carried on
negotiations with Luynes. Now, as always, he resented the domination
of the princes and nobles, remaining convinced that the King must,
in the last resort, be the chief authority in the kingdom. He deeply
distrusted Luynes, and not altogether for personal reasons of
disappointed ambition. In a sense he stood between the two parties;
he did not cease to be something of a mediator; his advice to Marie
de Médicis was never that of a political firebrand. Still, surrounded
by firebrands--Vendôme and his like--it was difficult for the wisest
counsels to prevail, and Richelieu seems to have accepted the
inevitable, hoping that the warlike show made by the Queen’s friends
might so far impress the King as to incline him to listen to the
serious complaints poured into his ears by her and by them.

The effect was not precisely this, but Richelieu was in one way
content: it was not the Queen-mother who declared war. Louis XIII.
himself, egged on, not by Luynes, who doubted and hesitated, but by the
Prince de Condé, decided suddenly to march into Normandy and to crush
his enemies by armed force.

“I will not stay in Paris,” he said, “to see my kingdom made a prey and
my faithful servants oppressed.... My conscience accuses me of no want
of piety with regard to the Queen my mother, justice with regard to my
people, kind deeds with regard to the nobles of my kingdom. Therefore,
_allons!_”

The words had a ring of Henry IV., and they were justified by the
event. With a small army the King swept Normandy. Rouen and Caen made
no resistance; the Duc de Longueville and the Grand Prieur de Vendôme