A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume V Part 10

The old d.u.c.h.ess of Rohan (Catherine de Parthenay Larcheveque) had shut herself up in La Roch.e.l.le with her daughter Anne de Rohan, as pious and as courageous as her mother, and of rare erudition into the bargain; she had hitherto refused to leave the town; but, when the blockade commenced, she asked leave to retire with two hundred women. The town had already been refused permission to get rid of useless mouths. "All the Roch.e.l.lese shall go out together," was the answer returned to Madame de Rohan. She determined to undergo with her brethren in the faith all the rigors of the siege. "Secure peace, complete victory, or honorable death," she wrote to her son the Duke of Rohan: the old device of Jeanne d'Albret, which had never been forgotten by the brave chief of the Huguenots.

At the head of the burgesses of La Roch.e.l.le, as determined as the d.u.c.h.ess of Rohan to secure their liberties or perish, was the president of the board of marine, soon afterwards mayor of the town, John Gutton, a rich merchant, whom the misfortunes of the times had wrenched away from his business to become a skilful admiral, an intrepid soldier, accustomed for years past to scour the seas as a corsair. "He had at his house," says a narrative of those days, "a great number of flags, which he used to show one after another, indicating the princes from whom he had taken them."

When he was appointed mayor, he drew his poniard and threw it upon the council-table. "I accept," he said, "the honor you have done me, but on condition that yonder poniard shall serve to pierce the heart of whoever dares to speak of surrender, mine first of all, if I were ever wretch enough to condescend to such cowardice." Of indomitable nature, of pa.s.sionate and proud character, Guiton, in fact, rejected all proposals of peace. "My friend, tell the cardinal that I am his very humble servant," was his answer to insinuating speeches as well as to threats; and he prepared with tranquil coolness for defence to the uttermost. Two munic.i.p.al councillors, two burgesses, and a clergyman were commissioned to judge and to punish spies and traitors; attention was concentrated upon getting provisions into the town; the country was already devastated, but reliance was placed upon promises of help from England; and religious exercises were everywhere multiplied. "We will hold out to the last day," reiterated the burgesses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: John Guiton's Oath----254]

It was the month of December; bad weather interfered with the siege-works; the king was having a line of circ.u.mvallation pushed forward to close the approaches to the city on the land side; the cardinal was having a mole of stone-work, occupying the whole breadth of the roads, constructed; the king's little fleet, commanded by M. de Guise, had been ordered up to protect the laborers; Spain had sent twenty-eight vessels in such bad condition that those which were rolled into the sea laden with stones were of more value. "They were employed Spanish-fashion," says Richelieu, "that is, to make an appearance so as to astound the Roch.e.l.lese by the union of the two crowns." A few days after their arrival, at the rumor of a.s.sistance coming from England, the Spanish admiral, who had secret orders to make no effort for France, demanded permission to withdraw his ships. "It was very shameful of them, but it was thought good to let them go without the king's consent, making believe that he had given them their dismissal, and desired them to go and set about preparing, one way or another, a large armament by the spring." The Roch.e.l.lese were rejoicing over the treaty they had just concluded with the King of England, who promised "to aid them by land and sea, to the best of his kingly power, until he should have brought about a fair and secure peace." The mole was every moment being washed away by the sea; and, "whilst the cardinal was employing all the wits which G.o.d had given him to bring to a successful issue the siege of La Roch.e.l.le to the glory of G.o.d and the welfare of the state, and was laboring to that end more than the bodily strength granted to him by G.o.d seemed to permit, one would have said that the sea and the winds, favoring the English and the islands, were up in opposition and thwarting his designs."

The king was growing tired, and wished to go to Paris; but this was not the advice of the cardinal, and "the truths he uttered were so displeasing to the king that he fell somehow into disgrace. The dislike the king conceived for him was such that he found fault with him about everything." The king at last took his departure, and the cardinal, who had attended him "without daring, out of respect, to take his sunshade to protect him against the heat of the sun, which was very great that day,"

was on his return taken ill with fever. "I am so downhearted that I cannot express the regret I feel at quitting the cardinal, fearing lest some accident may happen to him," the king had said to one of his servants: "tell him from me to take care of himself, to think what a state my affairs would be in if I were to lose him." When the king returned to La Roch.e.l.le on the 10th of April, he found his army strengthened, the line of circ.u.mvallation finished, and the mole well advanced into the sea; the a.s.sault was becoming possible, and the king summoned the place to surrender. [_Siege de La Roch.e.l.le. Archives eurieuses de l'Histoire de France,_ t. iii. p. 102.] "We recognize no other sheriffs and governors than ourselves," answered the sergeant on guard to the improvised herald sent by the king; "n.o.body will listen to you; away at once!" It was at last announced that the re-enforcements so impatiently expected were coming from England. "The cardinal, who knew that there was nothing so dangerous as to have no fear of one's enemy, had a long while before set everything in order, as if the English might arrive any day." Their fleet was signalled at sea; it numbered thirty vessels, and had a convoy of twenty barks laden with provisions and munitions, and it was commanded by the Earl of Denbigh, Buckingham's brother-in-law. The Roch.e.l.lese, transported with joy, "had planted a host of flags on the prominent points of their town." The English came and cast anchor at the tip of the Island of Re. The cannon of La Roch.e.l.le gave them a royal salute. A little boat with an English captain on board found means of breaking the blockade; and "Open a pa.s.sage," said the envoy to the Roch.e.l.lese, "as you sent notice to us in England, and we will deliver you." But the progress made in the works of the mole rendered the enterprise difficult; the besieged could not attempt anything; they waited and waited for Lord Denbigh to bring on an engagement; on the 19th of May, all the English ships got under sail and approached the roads. The besieged hurried on to the ramparts; there was the thunder of one broadside, and one only; and then the vessels tacked and crowded sail for England, followed by the gaze "of the king's army, who returned to make good cheer without any fear of the enemy, and with great hopes of soon taking the town."

Great was the despair in La Roch.e.l.le: "This shameful retreat of the English, and their aid which had only been received by faith, as they do in the Eucharist," wrote Cardinal Richelieu, "astounded the Roch.e.l.lese so mightily that they would readily have made up their minds to surrender, if Madame de Rohan, the mother, whose hopes for her children were all centred in the preservation of this town, and the minister Salbert, a very seditious fellow, had not regaled them with imaginary succor which they made them hope for." The cardinal, when he wrote these words, knew nothing of the wicked proposals made to Guiton and to Salbert. "Couldn't the cardinal be got rid of by the deed of one determined man?" it was asked: but the mayor refused; and, "It is not in such a way that G.o.d willeth our deliverance," said Salbert; "it would be too offensive to His holiness." And they suffered on.

Meanwhile, on the 24th of May, the posterns were observed to open, and the women to issue forth one after another, with their children and the old men; they came gliding towards the king's encampment, but "he ordered them to be driven back by force; and further, knowing that they had sown beans near the counterscarps of their town, a detachment was sent out to cut them down as soon as they began to come up, and likewise a little corn that they had sown in some dry spots of their marshes." Louis the Just fought the Roch.e.l.lese in other fashion than that in which Henry the Great had fought the Parisians.

The misery in the place became frightful; the poor died of hunger, or were cut down by the soldiery when they ventured upon sh.o.r.e at low tide to look for c.o.c.kles; the price of provisions was such that the richest alone could get a little meat to eat; a cow fetched two thousand livres, and a bushel of wheat eight hundred livres. Madame de Rohan had been the first to have her horses killed, but this resource was exhausted, and her cook at last "left the town and allowed himself to be taken, saying that he would rather be hanged than return to die of hunger." A rising even took place amongst the inhabitants who were clamorous to surrender, but Guiton had the revolters hanged. "I am ready," said he, "to cast lots with anybody else which shall live or be killed to feed his comrade with his flesh. As long as there is one left to keep the gates shut, it is enough." The mutineers were seized with terror, and men died without daring to speak. "We have been waiting three months for the effect of the excellent letters we received from the King of Great Britain," wrote Guiton on the 24th of August, to the deputies from La Roch.e.l.le who were in London, "and, meanwhile, we cannot see by what disasters it happens that we remain here in misery without seeing any sign of succor; our men can do no more, our inhabitants are dying of hunger in the streets, and all our families are in a fearful state from mourning, want, and perplexity; nevertheless, we will hold out to the last day, but in G.o.d's name delay no longer, for we perish." This letter never reached its destination; the watchmaker, Marc Biron; who had offered to convey it to England, was arrested whilst attempting to pa.s.s the royal lines, and was immediately hanged. La Roch.e.l.le, however, still held out. "Their rabid fury," says the cardinal, "gave them new strength, or rather the avenging wrath of G.o.d caused them to be supplied therewith in extraordinary measure by his evil spirit, in order to prolong their woes; they were already almost at the end thereof, and misery found upon them no more substance whereon it could feed and support itself; they were skeletons, empty shadows, breathing corpses, rather than living men." At the bottom of his heart, and in spite of the ill temper their resistance caused in him, the heroism of the Roch.e.l.lese excited the cardinal's admiration.

Buckingham had just been a.s.sa.s.sinated. "The king could not have lost a more bitter or a more idiotic enemy; his unreasoning enterprises ended unluckily, but they, nevertheless, did not fail to put us in great peril and cause us much mischief," says Richelieu "the idiotic madness of an enemy being more to be feared than his wisdom, inasmuch as the idiot does not act on any principle common to other men, he attempts everything and anything, violates his own interests, and is restrained by impossibility alone."

It was this impossibility of any aid that the cardinal attempted to impress upon the Roch.e.l.lese by means of letters which he managed to get into the town, representing to them that Buckingham, their protector, was dead, and that they were allowing themselves to be unjustly tyrannized over by a small number amongst them, who, being rich, had wheat to eat, whereas, if they were good citizens, they would take their share of the general misery. These manoeuvres did not remain without effect: the besieged resolved to treat, and a deputation was just about to leave the town, when a burgess who had broken through the lines arrived in hot haste, on his return from England; he had seen, he said, the armament all ready to set out to save them or perish; it must arrive within a week; the public body of La Roch.e.l.le had promised not to treat without the King of England's partic.i.p.ation; he was not abandoning his allies; and so the deputies returned home, and there was more waiting still.

On the 29th of September, the English flag appeared before St. Martin de Re; it was commanded by the Earl of Lindsay, and was composed of a hundred and forty vessels, which carried six thousand soldiers, besides the crews; the French who were of the religion were in the van, commanded by the Duke of Soubise and the Count of Laval, brother of the Duke of La Tremoille, who had lately renounced his faith in front of La Roch.e.l.le, being convinced of his errors by a single lesson from the cardinal.

"This armament was England's utmost effort, for the Parliament which was then being holden had granted six millions of livres to fit it out to avenge the affronts and ignominy which the English nation had encountered on the Island of Re, and afterwards by the shameful retreat of their armament in the month of May." But it was too late coming; the mole was finished, and the opening in it defended by two forts; and a floating palisade blocked the pa.s.sage as well. The English sent some petards against this construction, but they produced no effect; and when, next day, they attacked the royal fleet, the French crews lost but twenty-eight men; "the fire-ships were turned aside by men who feared fire as little as water." Lord Lindsay retired with his squadron to the shelter of the Island of Aix, sending to the king "Lord Montagu to propose some terms of accommodation." He demanded pardon for the Roch.e.l.lese, freedom of conscience, and quarter for the English garrison in La Roch.e.l.le; the answer was, "that the Roch.e.l.lese were subjectss of the king, who knew quite well what he had to do with them, and that the King of England had no right to interfere. As for the English, they should meet with the same treatment as was received by the French whom they held prisoners." Montagu set out for England to obtain further orders from the king his master.

All hope of effectual aid was gone, and the Roch.e.l.lese felt it; the French who were on board the English fleet had taken, like them, a resolution to treat; and they had already sent to the cardinal when, on the 29th of October, the deputies from La Roch.e.l.le arrived at the camp.

"Your fellows who were in the English army have already obtained grace,"

said the cardinal to them; and when they were disposed not to believe it, the cardinal sent for the pastors Vincent and Gobert, late delegates to King Charles I. "they embraced with tears in their eyes, not daring to speak of business, as they had been forbidden to do so on pain of death."

The demands of the Roch.e.l.lese were more haughty than befitted their extreme case. "Though they were but shadows of living men, and their life rested solely on the king's mercy, they actually dared, nevertheless, to propose to the cardinal a general treaty on behalf of all those of their party, including Madame de Rohan and Monsieur de Soubise, the maintenance of their privileges, of their governor, and of their mayor, together with the right of those bearing arms to march out with beat of drum and lighted match" [with the honors of war].

The cardinal was amused at their impudence, he writes in his _Memoires,_ and told them that they had no right to expect anything more than pardon, which, moreover, they did not deserve. "He was nevertheless anxious to conclude, wishing that Montagu should find peace made, and that the English fleet should see it made without their consent, which would render the rest of the king's business easier, whether as regarded England or Spain, or the interior of the kingdom." On the 28th the treaty, or rather the grace, was accordingly signed, "the king granting life and property to those of the inhabitants of the town who were then in it, and the exercise of the religion within La Roch.e.l.le." These articles bore the signature of a brigadier-general, M. de Marillac, the king not having thought proper to put his name at the bottom of a convention made with his subjects.

Next day, twelve deputies issued from the town, making a request for horses to Marshal de Ba.s.sompierre, whose quarters were close by, for they had not strength to walk. They dismounted on approaching the king's quarters, and the cardinal presented them to his Majesty. "Sir," said they, "we do acknowledge our crimes and rebellions, and demand mercy; promising to remain faithful for the future, if your Majesty deigns to remember the services we were able to render to the king your father."

The king gazed upon these suppliants kneeling at his feet, deputies from the proud city which had kept him more than a year at her gates; fleshless, almost fainting, they still bore on their features the traces of the haughty past. They had kept the lilies of France on their walls, refusing to the last to give themselves to England. "Better surrender to a king who could take Roch.e.l.le, than to one who couldn't succor her,"

said the mayor, "John Guiton, who was asked if he would not become an English subject. "I know that you have always been malignants," said the king at last, "and that you have done all you could to shake off the yoke of obedience to me; I forgive you, nevertheless, your rebellions, and will be a good prince to you, if your actions conform to your protestations." Thereupon he dismissed them, not without giving them a dinner, and sent victuals into the town; without which, all that remained would have been dead of hunger within two days.

The fighting men marched out, "the officers and gentlemen wearing their swords and the soldiery with bare (white) staff in hand," according to the conventions; as they pa.s.sed they were regarded with amazement, there not being more than sixty-four Frenchmen and ninety English: all the rest had been killed in sorties or had died of want. The cardinal at the same time entered this city, which he had subdued by sheer perseverance; Guiton came to meet him with six archers; he had not appeared during the negotiations, saying that his duty detained him in the town. "Away with you!" said the cardinal, "and at once dismiss your archers, taking care not to style yourself mayor any more on pain of death." Guiton made no reply, and went his way quietly to his house, a magnificent dwelling till lately, but now lying desolate amidst the general ruin. He was not destined to reside there long; the heroic defender of La Roch.e.l.le was obliged to leave the town and retire to Tournay-Boutonne. He returned to La Roch.e.l.le to die, in 1656.

The king made his entry into the subjugated town on the 1st of November, 1628: it was full of corpses in the chambers, the houses, the public thoroughfares; for those who still survived were so weak that they had not been able to bury the dead. Madame de Rohan and her daughter, who had not been included in the treaty, were not admitted to the honor of seeing his Majesty. "For having been the brand that had consumed this people," they were sent to prison at Niort; "there kept captive, without exercise of their religion, and so strictly that they had but one domestic to wait upon them, all which, however, did not take from them their courage or wonted zeal for the good of their party. The mother sent word to the Duke of Rohan, her son, that he was to put no faith in her letters, since she might be made to write them by force, and that no consideration of her pitiable condition should make her flinch to the prejudice of her party, whatever harm she might be made to suffer."

[_Memoires du Duc de Rohan,_ t. i. p. 395.] Worn out by so much suffering, the old d.u.c.h.ess of Rohan died in 1631 at her castle Du Pare: she had been released from captivity by the pacification of the South.

With La Roch.e.l.le fell the last bulwark of religious liberties.

Single-handed, Duke Henry of Rohan now resisted at the head of a handful of resolute men. But he was about to be crushed in his turn. The capture of La Roch.e.l.le had raised the cardinal's power to its height; it had, simultaneously, been the death-blow to the Huguenot party and to the factions of the grandees. "One of them was bold enough to say," on seeing that La Roch.e.l.le was lost, "Now we may well say that we are all lost." [_Memoires de Richelieu_]

Upper Languedoc had hitherto refused to take part in the rising, and the Prince of Conde was advancing on Toulouse when the Duke of Rohan attempted a bold enterprise against Montpellier. He believed that he was sure of his communications with the interior of the town; but when the detachment of the advance-guard got a footing on the draw-bridge the ropes that held it were cut, and "the soldiers fell into a ditch, where they were shot down with arquebuses, at the same time that musketry played upon them from without." The lieutenant fell back in all haste upon the division of the Duke of Rohan, who retreated "to the best Villages between Montpellier and Lunel, without ever a man from Montpellier going out to follow and see whither he went." The war was wasting Languedoc, Viverais, and Rouergue; the Dukes of Montmorency and Ventadour, under the orders of the Prince of Conde, were pursuing the troops of Rohan in every direction; the burgesses of Montauban had declared for the Reformers, and were ravaging the lands of their Catholic neighbors in return for the frightful ruin everywhere caused by the royal troops. The wretched peasantry laid the blame on the Duke of Rohan, "for one of the greatest misfortunes connected with the position of party-chiefs is this necessity they lie under of accounting for all their actions to the people, that is, to a monster composed of numberless heads, amongst which there is scarcely one open to reason." [_Memoires de Montmorency.] "Whoso has to do with a people that considers nothing difficult to undertake, and, as for the execution, makes no sort of provision, is apt to be much hampered," writes the Duke of Rohan in his _Memoires_ (t. i. p. 376). It was this extreme embarra.s.sment that landed him in crime. One of his emissaries, returning from Piedmont, where he had been admitted to an interview with the amba.s.sador of Spain, made overtures to him on behalf of that power "which had an interest, he said, in a prolongation of the hostilities in France, so as to be able to peaceably achieve its designs in Italy. The great want of money in which the said duke then found himself, the country being unable to furnish more, and the towns being unwilling to do anything further, there being nothing to hope from England, and nothing but words without deeds having been obtained from the Duke of Savoy, absolutely constrained him to find some means of raising it in order to subsist." And so, in the following year, the Duke of Rohan treated with the King of Spain, who promised to allow him annually three hundred thousand ducats for the keep of his troops and forty thousand for himself. In return the duke, who looked forward to "the time when he and his might make themselves sufficiently strong to canton themselves and form a separate state," promised, in that state, freedom and enjoyment of their property to all Catholics. A piece of strange and culpable blindness for which Rohan was to pay right dearly.

It was in the midst of this cruel partisan war that the duke heard of the fall of La Roch.e.l.le; he could not find fault "with folks so attenuated by famine that the majority of them could not support themselves without a stick, for having sought safety in capitulation;" but to the continual anxiety felt by him for the fate of his mother and sister was added disquietude as to the effect that this news might produce on his troops.

"The people, weary of and ruined by the war, and naturally disposed to be very easily cast down by adversity; the tradesmen annoyed at having no more chance of turning a penny; the burgesses seeing their possessions in ruins and uncultivated; all were inclined for peace at any price whatever." The Prince of Conde, whilst cruelly maltreating the countries in revolt, had elsewhere had the prudence to observe some gentle measures towards the peaceable Reformers in the hope of thus producing submission. He made this quite clear himself when writing to the Duke of Rohan: "Sir, the king's express commands to maintain them of the religion styled Reformed in entire liberty of conscience have caused me to hitherto preserve those who remain in due obedience to his Majesty in all Catholic places, countries as well as towns, in entire liberty.

Justice has run its free course, the worship continues everywhere, save in two or three spots where it served not for the exercise of religion, but to pave the way for rebellion. The officers who came out of rebel cities have kept their commissions; in a word, the treatment of so-styled Reformers, when obedient, has been the same as that of Catholics faithful to the king . . ." To which Henry de Rohan replied, "I confess to have once taken up arms unadvisedly, in so far as it was not on behalf of the affairs of our religion, but of those of yourself personally, who promised to obtain us reparation for the infractions of our treaties, and you did nothing of the kind, having had thoughts of peace before receiving news from the general a.s.sembly. Since that time everybody knows that I have had arms in my hands only from sheer necessity, in order to defend our properties, our lives, and the freedom of our consciences. I seek my repose in heaven, and G.o.d will give me grace to always find that of my conscience on earth. They say that in this war you have, not made a bad thing of it. This gives me some a.s.surance that you will leave our poor Uvennes at peace, seeing that there are more hard knocks than pistoles to be got there." The Prince of Conde avenged himself for this stinging reply by taking possession, in Brittany, of all the Duke of Rohan's property, which had been confiscated, and of which the king had made him a present. There were more pistoles to be picked up on the duke's estates than in the Cevennes.

The king was in Italy, and the Reformers hoped that his affairs would detain him there a long while; but "G.o.d, who had disposed it otherwise, breathed upon all those projects," and the arms of Louis XIII. were everywhere victorious; peace was concluded with Piedmont and England, without the latter treaty making any mention of the Huguenots. The king then turned his eyes towards Languedoc, and, summoning to him the Dukes of Montmorency and Schomberg, he laid siege to Privas. The cardinal soon joined him there, and it was on the day of his arrival that the treaty with England was proclaimed by heralds beneath the walls. The besieged thus learned that their powerful ally had abandoned them without reserve; at the first a.s.sault the inhabitants fled into the country, the garrison retired within the forts, and the king's-soldiers, penetrating into the deserted streets, were able, without resistance, to deliver up the town to pillage and flames. When the affrighted inhabitants came back by little and little within their walls, they found the houses confiscated to the benefit of the king, who invited a new population to inhabit Privas.

Town after town, "fortified Huguenot-wise," surrendered, opening to the royal armies the pa.s.sage to the Uvennes. The Duke of Rohan, who had at first taken position at Nimes, repaired to Anduze for the defence of the mountains, the real fortress of the Reformation in Languedoc. Alais itself had just opened its gates. Rohan saw that he could no longer impose the duty of resistance upon a people weary of suffering, "easily believing ill of good folks, and readily agreeing with those whiners who blame everything and do nothing." He sent "to the king, begging to be received to mercy, thinking it better to resolve on peace, whilst he could still make some show of being able to help it, than to be forced, after a longer resistance, to surrender to the king with a rope round his neck." The cardinal advised the king to show the duke grace, "well knowing that, together with him individually, the other cities, whether they wished it or not, would be obliged to do the like, there being but little resolution and constancy in people deprived of leaders, especially when they are threatened with immediate harm, and see no door of escape open."

The general a.s.sembly of the Reformers, which was then in meeting at Nimes, removed to Anduze to deliberate with the Duke of Rohan; a wish was expressed to have the opinion of the province of the Cevennes, and all the deputies repaired to the king's presence. No more surety-towns; fortifications everywhere razed, at the expense and by the hands of the Reformers; the Catholic worship re-established in all the churches of the Reformed towns; and, at this price, an amnesty granted for all acts of rebellion, and religious liberties confirmed anew,--such were the conditions of the peace signed at Alais on the 28th of June, 1629, and made public the following month at Nimes, under the name of Edict of Grace. Montauban alone refused to submit to them.

The Duke of Rohan left France and retired to Venice, where his wife and daughter were awaiting him. He had been appointed by the Venetian senate generalissimo of the forces of the republic, when the cardinal, who had no doubt preserved some regard for his military talents, sent him an offer of the command of the king's troops in the Valteline. There he for several years maintained the honor of France, being at one time abandoned and at another supported by the cardinal, who ultimately left him to bear the odium of the last reverse. Meeting with no response from the court, cut off from every resource, he brought back into the district of Gex the French troops driven out by the Grisons themselves, and then retired to Geneva. Being threatened with the king's wrath, he set out for the camp of his friend Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar; and it was whilst fighting at his side against the imperialists that he received the wound of which he died in Switzerland, on the 16th of April, 1638. His body was removed to Geneva amidst public mourning. A man of distinguished mind and n.o.ble character, often wild in his views and hopes, and so deeply absorbed in the interests of his party and of his church, that he had sometimes the misfortune to forget those of his country.

Meanwhile the king had set out for Paris, and the cardinal was marching on Montauban. Being obliged to halt at Pezenas because he had a fever, he there received a deputation from Montauban, asking to have its fortifications preserved. On the minister's formal refusal, supported by a movement in advance on the part of Marshal Ba.s.sompierre with the army, the town submitted unreservedly. "Knowing that the cardinal had made up his mind to enter in force, they found this so bitter a pill that they could scarcely swallow it;" they, nevertheless, offered the dais to the minister, as they had been accustomed to do to the governor, but he refused it, and would not suffer the consuls to walk on foot beside his horse. Ba.s.sompierre set guards at the doors of the meeting-house, that things might be done without interruption or scandal; it was ascertained that the Parliament of Toulouse, "habitually intractable in all that concerned religion," had enregistered the edict without difficulty; the gentlemen of the neighborhood came up in crowds, the Reformers to make their submission and the Catholics to congratulate the cardinal; on the day of his departure the pickaxe was laid to the fortifications of Montauban; those of Castres were already beginning to fall; and the Huguenot party in France was dead. Deprived of the political guarantees which had been granted them by Henry IV., the Reformers had nothing for it but to retire into private life. This was the commencement of their material prosperity; they henceforth transferred to commerce and, industry all the intelligence, courage, and spirit of enterprise that they had but lately displayed in the service of their cause, on the battle-field or in the cabinets of kings.

"From that time," says Cardinal Richelieu, "difference in religion never prevented me from rendering the Huguenots all sorts of good offices, and I made no distinction between Frenchmen but in respect of fidelity." A grand a.s.sertion, true at bottom, in spite of the frequent grievances that the Reformers had often to make the best of; the cardinal was more tolerant than his age and his servants; what he had wanted to destroy was the political party; he did not want to drive the Reformers to extremity, nor force them to fly the country; happy had it been if Louis XIV. could have listened to and borne in mind the instructions given by Richelieu to Count de Sault, commissioned to see after the application in Dauphiny of the edicts of pacification: "I hold that, as there is no need to extend in favor of them of the religion styled Reformed that which is provided by the edicts, so there is no ground for cutting down the favors granted them thereby; even now, when, by the grace of G.o.d, peace is so firmly established in the kingdom, too much precaution cannot be used for the prevention of all these discontents amongst the people. I do a.s.sure you that the king's veritable intention is to have all his subjects living peaceably in the observation of his edicts, and that those who have authority in the provinces will do him service by conforming thereto."

The era of liberty pa.s.sed away with Henry IV.; that of tolerance, for the Reformers, began with Richelieu, pending the advent with Louis XIV. of the day of persecution.

CHAPTER XLI.----LOUIS XIII., CARDINAL RICHELIEU, AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

France was reduced to submission; six years of power had sufficed for Richelieu to obtain the mastery; from that moment he directed his ceaseless energy towards Europe. "He feared the repose of peace," said the amba.s.sador Nani in his letters to Venice; "and thinking himself more safe amidst the bustle of arms, he was the originator of so many wars, and of such long-continued and heavy calamities, he caused so much blood and so many tears to flow within and without the kingdom, that there is nothing to be astonished at, if many people have represented him as faithless, atrocious in his hatred, and inflexible in his vengeance.

But no one, nevertheless, can deny him the gifts that this world is accustomed to attribute to its greatest men; and his most determined enemies are forced to confess that he had so many and such great ones, that he would have carried with him power and prosperity wherever he might have had the direction of affairs. We may say that, having brought back unity to divided France, having succored Italy, upset the empire, confounded England, and enfeebled Spain, he was the instrument chosen by divine Providence to direct the great events of Europe."

The Venetian's independent and penetrating mind did not mislead him; everywhere in Europe were marks of Richelieu's handiwork. "There must be no end to negotiations near and far," was his saying: he had found negotiations succeed in France; he extended his views; numerous treaties had already marked the early years of the cardinal's power; and, after 1630, his activity abroad was redoubled. Between 1623 and 1642 seventy-four treaties were concluded by Richelieu: four with England; twelve with the United Provinces; fifteen with the princes of Germany; six with Sweden; twelve with Savoy; six with the republic of Venice; three with the pope; three with the emperor; two with Spain; four with Lorraine; one with the Grey Leagues of Switzerland; one with Portugal; two with the revolters of Catalonia and Roussillon; one with Russia; two with the Emperor of Morocco: such was the immense network of diplomatic negotiations whereof the cardinal held the threads during nineteen years.

An enumeration of the alliances would serve, without further comment, to prove this: that the foreign policy of Richelieu was a continuation of that of Henry IV.; it was to Protestant alliances that he looked for their support in order to maintain the struggle against the house of Austria, whether the German or the Spanish branch. In order to give his views full swing, he waited till he had conquered the Huguenots at home: nearly all his treaties with Protestant powers are posterior to 1630.

So soon as he was secure that no political discussions in France itself would come to thwart his foreign designs, he marched with a firm step towards that enfeeblement of Spain and that upsetting of the empire of which Nani speaks. Henry IV. and Queen Elizabeth, pursuing the same end, had sought and found the same allies: Richelieu had the good fortune, beyond theirs, to meet, for the execution of his designs, with Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden.

Richelieu had not yet entered the king's council (1624), when the breaking off of the long negotiations between England and Spain, on the subject of the marriage of the Prince of Wales with the Infanta, was officially declared to Parliament. At the very moment when Prince Charles, with the Duke of Buckingham, was going post-haste to Madrid, to see the Infanta Mary Anne of Spain, they were already thinking, at Paris, of marrying him to Henrietta of France, the king's young sister, scarcely fourteen years of age. King James I. was at that time obstinately bent upon his plan of alliance with Spain; when it failed, his son and big favorite forced his hand to bring him round to France. His envoys at Paris, the Earl of Carlisle and Lord Holland, found themselves confronted by Cardinal Richelieu, commissioned, together with some of his colleagues, to negotiate the affair. M. Guizot, in his _Projet de Mariage royal_ (1 vol. 18mo: 1863; Paris, Hachette et Cie), has said that the marriage of Henry IV.'s daughter with the Prince of Wales was, in Richelieu's eyes, one of the essential acts of a policy necessary to the greatness of the kingship and of France. He obtained the best conditions possible for the various interests involved, but without any stickling and without favor for such and such a one of these interests, skilfully adapting words and appearance, but determined upon attaining his end.

The tarryings and miscarriages of Spanish policy had warned Richelieu to make haste. "In less than nine moons," says James I.'s private secretary, James Howell, "this great matter was proposed, prosecuted, and accomplished; whereas the sun might, for as many years, have run his course from one extremity of the zodiac to the other, before the court of Spain would have arrived at any resolution and conclusion. That gives a good idea of the difference between the two nations--the leaden step of the one and the quicksilver movements of the other. It also shows that the Frenchman is more n.o.ble in his proceedings, less full of scruple, reserve, and distrust, and that he acts more chivalrously."

In France, meanwhile, as well as in Spain, the question of religion was the rock of offence. Richelieu confined himself to demanding, in a general way, that, in this matter, the King of England should grant, in order to obtain the sister of the King of France, all that he had promised in order to obtain the King of Spain's. "So much was required,"

he said, "by the equality of the two crowns."

The English negotiators were much embarra.s.sed; the Protestant feelings of Parliament had shown themselves very strongly on the subject of the Spanish marriage. "As to public freedom for the Catholic religion," says the cardinal, "they would not so much as hear of it, declaring that it was a deaign, under cover of alliance, to destroy their const.i.tution even to ask such a thing of them." "You want to conclude the marriage," said Lord Holland to the queen-mother, "and yet you enter on the same paths that the Spaniards took to break it off; which causes all sorts of doubts and mistrusts, the effect whereof the premier minister of Spain, Count Olivarez, is very careful to aggravate by saying that, if the pope granted a dispensation for the marriage with France, the king his master would march to Rome with an army, and give it up to sack."

"We will soon stop that," answered Mary de' Medici quickly; "we will cut out work for him elsewhere." At last it was agreed that King James and his son should sign a private engagement, not inserted in the contract of marriage, "securing to the English Catholics more liberty and freedom in all that concerns their religion, than they would have obtained by virtue of any articles whatsoever accorded by the marriage treaty with Spain, provided that they made sparing use of them, rendering to the King of England the "obedience owed by good and true subjects; the which king, of his benevolence, would not bind them by any oath contrary to their religion." The promises were vague and the securities anything but substantial; still, the vanity as well as the fears of King James were appeased, and Richelieu had secured, simultaneously with his own ascendency, the policy of France. Nothing remained but to send to Rome for the purpose of obtaining the dispensation. The ordinary amba.s.sador, Count de Bethune, did not suffice for so delicate a negotiation; Richelieu sent Father Berulle. Father Berulle, founder of the brotherhood of the Oratory, patron of the Carmelites, and the intimate friend of Francis de Sales, though devoid of personal ambition, had, been clever enough to keep himself on good terms with Cardinal Richelieu, whose political views he did not share, and with the court of Rome, whose most faithful allies, the Jesuits, he had often thwarted. He was devoted to Queen Mary de' Medici, and willingly promoted her desires in the matter of her daughter's marriage. He found the court of Rome in confusion, and much exercised by Spanish intrigue. "This court," he wrote to the cardinal, "is, in conduct and in principles, very different from what one would suppose before having tried it for one's self; for my part, I confess to having learned more of it in a few hours, since I have been on the spot, than I knew by all the talk that I have heard. The dial constantly observed in this country is the balance existing between France, Italy, and Spain." "The king my master," said Count de Bethune, quite openly, "has obtained from England all he could; it is no use to wait for more ample conditions, or to measure them by the Spanish ell; I have orders against sending off any courier save to give notice of concession of the dispensation: otherwise there would be nothing but asking one thing after another." "If we determine to act like Spain, we, like her, shall lose everything," said Father Berulle. Some weeks later, on the 6th of January, 1625, Berulle wrote to the cardinal, "For a month I have been on the point of starting, but we have been obliged to take so much trouble and have so many meetings on the subject of transcripts and missives as well as the kernel of the business . . . I will merely tell you that the dispensation is pure and simple."

King James I. had died on the 6th of April, 1625; and so it was King Charles I., and not the Prince of Wales, whom the Duke of Chevreuse represented at Paris on the 11th of May, 1625, at the espousals of Princess Henrietta Maria. She set out on the 2d of June for England, escorted by the Duke of Buckingham, who had been sent by the king to fetch her, and who had gladly prolonged his stay in France, smitten as he was by the young Queen Anne of Austria. Charles I. went to Dover to meet his wife, showing himself very amiable and attentive to her. Though she little knew how fatal they would be to her, the king of England's palaces looked bare and deserted to the new queen, accustomed as she was to French elegance; she, however, appeared contented. "How can your Majesty reconcile yourself to a Huguenot for a husband?" asked one of her suite, indiscreetly. "Why not?" she replied, with spirit. "Was not my father one?"

By this speech Henrietta Maria expressed, undoubtedly without realizing all its grandeur, the idea which had suggested her marriage and been prominent in France during the whole negotiations. It was the policy of Henry IV. that Henry IV.'s daughter was bringing to a triumphant issue.

The marriage between Henrietta Maria and Charles I., negotiated and concluded by Cardinal Richelieu, was the open declaration of the fact that the style of Protestant or Catholic was not the supreme law of policy in Christian Europe, and that the interests of nations should not remain subservient to the religious faith of the reigning or governing personages.

Unhappily the policy of Henry IV., carried on by Cardinal Richelieu, found no Queen Elizabeth any longer on the throne of England to comprehend it and maintain it. Charles I., tossed about between the haughty caprices of his favorite Buckingham and the religious or political pa.s.sions of his people, did not long remain attached to the great idea which had predominated in the alliance of the two crowns.

Proud and timid, imperious and awkward, all at the same time, he did not succeed, in the first instance, in gaining the affections of his young wife, and early infractions of the treaty of marriage; the dismissal of all the queen's French servants, hostilities between the merchant navies of the two nations, had for some time been paving the way for open war, when the Duke of Buckingham, in the hope of winning back to him the House of Commons (June, 1626), madly attempted the expedition against the Island of Re. What was the success of it, as well as of the two attempts that followed it, has already been shown.

Three years later, on the 24th of April, 1629, the King of England concluded peace with France without making any stipulation in favor of the Reformers whom hope of aid from him had drawn into rebellion. "I declare," says the Duke of Rohan, "that I would have suffered any sort of extremity rather than be false to the many sacred oaths we had given him not to listen to any treaty without him, who had many times a.s.sured us that he would never make peace without including us in it." The English accepted the peace "as the king had desired, not wanting the King of Great Britain to meddle with his rebellious Huguenot subjects any more than he would want to meddle with his Catholic subjects if they were to rebel against him." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iv. p. 421.] The subjects of Charles I. were soon to rebel against him: and France kept her word and did not interfere.

The Hollanders, with more prudence and ability than distinguished Buckingham and Charles I., had done better service to the Protestant cause without ever becoming entangled in the quarrels that divided France; natural enemies as they were of Spain and the house of Austria, they readily seconded Richelieu in the struggle he maintained against them; besides, the United Provinces were as yet poor, and the cardinal always managed to find money for his allies; nearly all the treaties he concluded with Holland were treaties of alliance and subsidy; those of 1641 and 1642 secured to them twelve hundred thousand livres a year out of the coffers of France. Once only the Hollanders were faithless to their engagements: it was during the siege of Roch.e.l.le, when the national feeling would not admit of war being made on the French Huguenots. All the forces of Protestantism readily united against Spain; Richelieu had but to direct them. She, in fact, was the great enemy, and her humiliation was always the ultimate aim of the cardinal's foreign policy; the struggle, power to power, between France and Spain, explains, during that period, nearly all the political and military complications in Europe. There was no lack of pretexts for bringing it on. The first was the question of the Valteline, a lovely and fertile valley, which, extending from the Lake of Como to the Tyrol, thus serves as a natural communication between Italy and Germany. Possessed but lately, as it was, by the Grey Leagues of the Protestant Swiss, the Valteline, a Catholic district, had revolted at the instigation of Spain in 1620; the emperor, Savoy, and Spain had wanted to divide the spoil between them; when France, the old ally of the Grisons, had interfered, and, in 1623, the forts of the Valteline had been intrusted on deposit to the pope, Urban VIII. He still retained them in 1624, when the Grison lords, seconded by a French re-enforcement under the orders of the Marquis of Ceeuvres, attacked the feeble garrison of the Valteline; in a few days they were masters of all the places in the canton; the pope sent his nephew, Cardinal Barberini, to Paris to complain of French aggression, and with a proposal to take the sovereignty of the Valteline from the Grisons; that was, to give it to Spain. "Besides," said Cardinal Richelieu, "the precedent and consequences of it would be perilous for kings in whose dominions it hath pleased G.o.d to permit diversity of religion." The legate could obtain nothing. The a.s.sembly of Notables, convoked by Richelieu in 1625, approved of the king's conduct, and war was resolved upon. The siege of La Roch.e.l.le r.e.t.a.r.ded it for two years; Richelieu wanted to have his hands free; he concluded a specious peace with Spain, and the Valteline remained for the time being in the hands of the Grisons, who were one day themselves to drive the French out of it.