The Bourbon Kings of France

by Seward, Desmond

  Richelieu’s masterful, fastidious face with its high nose and prominent cheekbones, was the mask of a man who lived on the verge of total nervous breakdown, racked by headaches and indigestion, weakened by bad circulation. The Cardinal was agonizingly prone to depression and discouragement, terrified by bad news and by threats of violence, even by loud noises; he was frequently in tears—on occasion he even hid under his bed from whence he had to be coaxed by his valet. Greedy, avaricious, he was also coldly arrogant and lacked charm. Women in particular disliked him. Yet he was undoubtedly one of the greatest of all Frenchmen; of seventeenth-century Englishmen, only Oliver Cromwell was of the same stature.

  Of his aims he later wrote, ‘I promised Your Majesty to use all my industry and all the authority which it pleased you to give me to ruin the Huguenot party, to bring down the pride of the great lords, to bring back all your subjects to their duty, and to restore your name to its rightful place among foreign nations.’ Richelieu’s determination to make his country the leading power of Europe at the expense of the Catholic Habsburgs conflicted in no way with his Catholicism; he believed that a strong France was essential for the health of the Church; that Rome could not be allowed to remain a mere tool of Spain. He quickly made Protestant alliances, with England and the Dutch.

  The English alliance was soon jeopardized by the Duke of Buckingham. This magnificent creature visited France in May 1625 to assist at the marriage (by proxy) of Mme Henriette Marie to King Charles at Nôtre-Dame. For a week’s visit he brought twenty-seven suits—one, of white velvet embroidered with diamonds and shedding loosely-sewn pearls as he walked, was valued at £24,000. His beauty and elegance took Paris by storm.

  He was soon embroiled in a plot to seduce the Queen of France, by the Duchesse de Chevreuse, Luynes’s widow, who was the evil genius of Louis XIII’s marriage. In 1618 she had become Mistress of the Queen’s Household. Richelieu wrote of her, ‘She was the ruin of the Queen, whose wholesome outlook was corrupted by her example; she swayed the Queen’s heart, ruined her, set her against the King and her duties.’ It was her horseplay in the spring of 1622, when she persuaded the pregnant Queen to run down a gallery, which made Anne lose a Dauphin. Born in 1600, a tiny blonde with a delicate face and unforgettable eyes, Marie de Chevreuse was a woman of innumerable conquests. An enemy described her as the matchmaker behind every court love affair. Startlingly unconventional (in London she swam the Thames, to the horror of the English), she and her antics were a perennial scandal. Next to love affairs she enjoyed political intrigue, and nursed a real hatred of Louis, whom she referred to as ‘that idiot’.

  ‘La Chevrette’s’ latest lover was Lord Holland, one of Buckingham’s suite. She swiftly enchanted the Duke with the prospect of cuckolding a King. At Amiens, where the court took official leave of the English embassy, Buckingham climbed into a private garden where the Queen was taking an evening walk; he may even have tried to rape her. Anne’s shrieks summoned her attendants. Later, during less private interviews, he wept and spoke with such passion that he terrified her. Louis was so affronted that henceforward he refused to think seriously of an English alliance.

  Despite his dealings with Protestant powers abroad, nothing could deflect Richelieu from his determination to break Messieurs les prétendus réformés. He wrote, ‘So long as the Protestants in France are a state within a state, the King cannot be master of his realm or achieve great things abroad.’ The capital of French Protestantism was still La Rochelle. In July 1627 an English fleet commanded by Buckingham put in at the Isle of Ré opposite the port. Immediately the Rochellois rose, while throughout the south Rohan raised the Huguenot squirearchy. Luckily the royal garrison on Ré prevented Buckingham from consolidating his position and when they were relieved by Louis in November, the English hastily evacuated the island. La Rochelle was besieged. However, it was still possible for the English to relieve it as the French King did not possess a navy.

  Richelieu, who never left the siege and wore a gilded cuirass over his purple soutane, had a solution. A breakwater was built across the mouth of the port, consisting of sunken ships on top of which a stone dyke was constructed; there were forts at each end and floating batteries were moored along it. Frantically, soldiers and peasants worked waist deep in the water. Louis and the Cardinal never left the dyke—the King had to be prevented from taking up a pick himself. On the landward side, the city was isolated by three lines of royal fortifications including thirteen forts. But the Rochellois, commanded by the fiery Duchesse de Rohan and by its mayor, the brave Jean Guiton, supported by eight fanatic pastors, resisted heroically. It was a dreadful winter and the besiegers suffered accordingly. Louis grew bored and went off to hunt. The Cardinal had a nervous collapse, though in March he none the less led an abortive night attack through a sewer.

  By the spring the Rochellois were starving. When the English fleet returned, it found the dyke impregnable and sailed home. A second English expedition in September 1628 also turned back. Mme de Rohan boiled her leather armchair to make soup—others ate their shoes. On a single day 400 Rochellois died of hunger. Those who tried to escape were hanged by the besiegers. (However, Louis spared a young lady who had written to an officer saying she would marry him and turn Catholic if he would save her—the royal army celebrated their wedding in splendid style.) On 28 October 1628 La Rochelle surrendered. The King, wearing an armour damascened with golden fleurs-de-lis, rode into the city on All Saints’ Day. He wept when he saw the misery caused by the siege—the unburied corpses and the scarcely less ghastly survivors. (Wagon-loads of food were brought in, whereupon a hundred Rochellois died of over-eating.) A triumphant Richelieu said Mass in the city’s principal church, giving Communion to Louis and his captains. La Rochelle’s fortifications were razed to the ground and every church had to be returned to the Catholics. The Rochellois kept only the right to worship as Protestants.

  The Duc de Rohan still held out in Languedoc, so in the spring of 1629 Louis launched a final campaign. Whole towns were demolished—in some places the King’s officers hanged all males or sent them to the galleys. Eventually Rohan surrendered and was banished. The Huguenots were ordered to summon their Assembly for Louis to dictate his terms. Peace was signed at Alais in June 1629; the Protestants lost their places de sûretés but the Edict of Nantes was confirmed. Even though a Huguenot rising took place as late as 1752, Alais was the end of the Wars of Religion.

  There was another focus of rebellion, in the person of the heir to the throne, ‘Monsieur’. Born in 1608, Gaston, Duc d’Anjou, was not quite so useless as he has been painted; his fat face and bulging eyes give a misleading impression. He was both kind-natured and intelligent, a patron of the arts who collected paintings and gem stones. But he was also weak, and easily influenced. When in 1626 Richelieu wanted him to marry a Bourbon cousin, Mlle de Montpensier who was the richest heiress in France, Mme de Chevreuse put it into Monsieur’s head that he did not want the marriage. A confused plot emerged in which the chief schemers were Gaston’s bastard half-brothers, the Duc de Vendôme and the Grand Prior, his tutor the Marshal d’Ornano, and of course Mme de Chevreuse and her latest lover, the Comte de Chalais. Undoubtedly there was talk of murdering Richelieu and possibly Louis too—Gaston was to be made King and married to Anne of Austria. (Louis always thought that Anne had been in the conspiracy and never quite forgave her, saying on his deathbed, ‘In my condition I have to forgive her but I don’t have to believe her.’) The plot came to light when Chalais lost his nerve and nade a partial confession to Richelieu. The Vendôme brothers were sent to prison where the Grand Prior died. Chalais paid with his life; his execution was so bungled that it took thirty-four blows to sever his head. Mme de Chevreuse was banished to Poitou but escaped to Lorraine. Gaston confessed everything with gusto, implicating everybody, and then tamely married Mlle de Montpensier—the ceremony was performed by Richelieu. As a reward Gaston was made Duke of Orleans.

  Henri IV in 1605

  L
ouis XIII by Philippe de Champaigne

  The Cardinal was determined to show the nobility that they were not above the law. A royal edict was therefore issued which forbade duelling under pain of death. In 1627 the Comte des Chapelles and the Comte de Bouteville fought a duel in the Place Royale, ignoring the edict. Bouteville had taken part in no less than twenty-two affairs of honour. Within a month they had been arrested, tried, condemned and beheaded in the Place de Grève. It was well known that the Cardinal persuaded Louis that the executions were necessary. Richelieu attacked the nobility in other ways too. In 1628 he was responsible for an edict ordering the demolition of fortified châteaux, and for another which abolished the offices of Constable and Grand Admiral. By 1634 a tribunal in Poitiers was condemning over 200 noblemen for robbery and other crimes. In 1635 he instituted the office of Intendant—a royal representative in each province who kept an eye on the governor and on any other source of opposition. Such measures earned the Cardinal much hatred. One can only wonder at his courage; Gaston remained heir to the throne until 1638, and in the event of Louis’s death Richelieu would probably have lost not only his place but his life as well.

  Sometimes even Louis found Richelieu irritating. There is a story that on one occasion the King growled at him, ‘You go first, since you are the real King.’ Richelieu replied smoothly, ‘Only to light the way,’ and, picking up a torch, preceded Louis like a lackey. In reality the King seems to have been fond of the Cardinal rather than otherwise. His letters to him were often almost excessively affectionate; he could write, ‘Be assured that I shall love you until my last breath’, signing himself ‘Louis de très bon coeur’. Richelieu took care to let the King know exactly what he was doing. Besides a daily correspondence, the two men spent long hours together, discussing plans and projects. Louis once said of Richelieu, ‘He is the greatest servant that France has ever had.’ The Cardinal wrote gratefully, ‘The capacity to permit his ministers to serve him is not the least of qualities in a great King.’

  In the autumn of 1630 Louis fell so ill that he was not expected to live; he received the Last Sacraments, asking pardon for any wrong he might have done. The doctors thought he was suffering from dysentery but in fact he had an internal abscess: fortunately it burst, and he made a slow recovery, during which he was nursed by his wife and by his mother. The latter had now turned against the Cardinal. When Louis was at his weakest they insisted that he must dismiss Richelieu. Rumours of the Cardinal’s imminent disgrace circulated, and appeared to be confirmed by Louis’s curious coldness when Richelieu visited him. On his return to Paris, the King stayed with his mother at her new palace of the Luxembourg. On 10 November Marie took Louis into her chamber and again demanded that he dismiss the Cardinal. As she was speaking, Richelieu, who had been warned, burst into her room through a back door, to be met with a torrent of abuse from the Queen Mother. He knelt before the King begging for mercy, at which Marie screamed at Louis, ‘Do you prefer a lackey to your own mother?’ The King, who must have found the scene intolerable, told Richelieu to rise, bowed to his mother and left for his hunting-lodge at Versailles. Marie thought she had won: courtiers flocked to her, including the Marshal de Marillac and his brother, the Garde des Sceaux, as well as Bassompierre.

  Richelieu made preparations for flight. Suddenly one of the King’s young cronies, Claude de Saint-Simon, appeared with a message from Louis summoning him to Versailles. There he again knelt before the King, and in an emotional scene Louis told him, ‘I have in you the most faithful, the most affectionate servant in the world. I have seen the respect and the attention which you have always paid the Queen my mother. If you had failed in your duty to her I would have cast you off. But she has no cause whatever to complain of you. She has let herself be prejudiced by a cabal whom I know very well how to destroy. Serve me as you have so far served me and I will defend you against every enemy.’ The Marshal de Marillac was arrested at the head of his troops, accused of embezzlement and beheaded; his brother, the Garde des Sceaux, died in prison; Bassompierre was sent to the Bastille, where he spent twelve years. Louis, not the Cardinal, was responsible for these measures. The Queen Mother was confined at Compiègne, from where in 1631 she fled to the Spanish Netherlands, dying in exile a decade later. Her attempt to overthrow Richelieu is known as ‘The Day of Dupes’.

  Gaston too left France. From Lorraine he appealed to all Frenchmen to revolt against the Cardinal. He won a valuable recruit in the rich and popular Duc de Montmorency, who was angry at not being given the great office of Constable which his father and grandfather had held. In autumn 1632 Gaston invaded France and was joined by Montmorency, but their little army was easily defeated at Castelnaudry. Monsieur fled at the first charge. Poor Montmorency, a paragon of knightly virtue, was beheaded at Toulouse. Gaston swore to relinquish evil companions and be ‘especially fond of his cousin the Cardinal de Richelieu’. He soon fled again, to join his mother.

  Louis was busy abroad, with the war of the Mantuan Succession, which broke out in 1629. (Mantua was important because it controlled one of the roads between Spanish Italy and the Empire.) The Duke of Mantua, a Gonzaga but also a Frenchman, defended his Ducal throne to the point of selling his Titians and Mantegnas. In the campaign’s early stages Richelieu took the King’s place, clad as a cavalier in clothes of ‘feuille morte’ edged with gold, wearing a cuirass of polished steel, white jackboots, a plumed hat and a rapier. In March 1630 Louis stormed the Savoyard fortress of Pignerolo, having first forced the pass of Susa where he smashed his way through three lines of fortifications. The old Duke of Savoy knelt in the snow to kiss Louis’s boots in token of submission, the war ending in April 1631 with the peace of Cherasco. Savoy ceded Pignerolo to France—with it went control of a pass over the Alps which guaranteed France access to Italy.

  An incident during the campaign shows Louis’s fatalism. The mistress of the house where he lodged fell ill with the plague. His staff were terrified but Louis, dismissing them, said simply, ‘Withdraw and pray God that your own hostesses are not stricken, but first draw my bed curtains. I shall try to get some sleep and then we will leave to-morrow morning, early and without panic.’

  During Gaston’s revolt, the Parlement of Paris had refused to ratify a royal edict condemning the rebellion. Louis soon forced them into a humiliating ratification. For the Parlement were not exempt from the revolution in government, their functions and privileges being constantly under attack. In 1641 Louis savagely told the senior President of the Paris Parlement, ‘You have been created only to judge between Maître Pierre and Maître Jean and if you continue your plots I will clip your claws so close that your flesh will suffer.’

  Culturally, the later years of Louis XIII’s reign were a period of some distinction. In 1636 Corneille’s Le Cid was triumphantly performed for the first time. Next year Descartes’s Discours de la Méthode was published. The Academie Française was set up, charged with producing a dictionary which would preserve the purity of the French language. A natural history museum, the Jardin des Plantes, was founded for the instruction of medical students. In the chambre bleue of her hôtel near the Louvre, Mme de Rambouillet created the salon, holding receptions at which great lords and bourgeois intellectuals could meet on equal terms. Life was becoming altogether more graceful; the forerunners of the boulevardiers learnt to stroll through the elegant arcades of the Place Royale as well as to strut and bow at court. There were many new buildings in which they were able to parade, notably Louis’s extension of the west wing of the Louvre and Richelieu’s Palais Cardinal. Most of the hôtels of the Marais date from this period. At Fontainebleau and at Saint-Germain the King employed Simon Vouet, one of the best painters of the day; he also commissioned Philippe de Champaigne to paint an allegory of the royal triumph over heresy at La Rochelle. However, though Louis enjoyed plays, he had no deep interest in the arts and cancelled all literary pensions when Richelieu died.

  A field in which Louis and Richelieu were less than successful
was finance. Their government lived from hand to mouth, selling offices or confiscating the property of rebellious noblemen. The Cardinal increased taxes, but unlike Sully, relied on tax farmers. There were riots in Paris, peasant risings in Guyenne and Normandy—tax collectors were murdered and châteaux sacked until troops had to be sent in to restore order. One concrete achievement was a standard gold coinage, the famous Louis d’or, which made its appearance in 1640, bearing a most impressive portrait of the King.

  In 1631 Théophraste Renaudot, a Paris doctor, published his Gazette, and was immediately given a royal pension. His journal, the first modern newspaper, was made to print royal edicts. It also published news bulletins which gave details of military campaigns—when they were successful—and of attempts to lighten taxes. Some of these bulletins were written by Louis himself, who had at once grasped their importance as a means of shaping public opinion.

  Fully mature and bearded, the King had lost none of his neuroses. Scrupulously correct and owing something to fashionable Stoicism (he had probably read Epictetus), he still gave way to moods of hysterical depression during which he was quite unapproachable. Though an introvert, he was fond of such extrovert amusements as cards and parade grounds. His tastes were eccentric in their simplicity. When the axle of his carriage broke, the King, taking an axe, walked into the forest and returned with a sapling which he had trimmed. On campaign he could be found in a kitchen morosely cooking his supper. Like most Bourbons he had little time for intellectuals; Mme de Rambouillet’s précieuses were not much in evidence at the court of Louis XIII.