The Red Sphinx

by Alexandre Dumas

  —Charles IV, Duc de Lorraine

  Richelieu read the dispatch one more time, and then said, with the smile of a triumphant player, “So! I begin to see the chessboard more clearly.”

  XV

  The State of Europe in 1628

  We’ve arrived at a point where we believe there would be no harm in helping the reader, like Cardinal Richelieu, to see the chessboard more clearly.

  This clarity will be easier for us, after two hundred and thirty-seven years, than for the cardinal, surrounded as he was by a thousand different schemes, conspiracy upon conspiracy, fending off one plot after another, while smoke and mists veiled the far horizon he needed to perceive in order to see past the parochial interests blocking his overall vision.

  If this was merely one of those books bought to show off next to a picture album or scrapbook, a book for the coffee table so visitors could admire its engravings, or a book for a little light reading in the dressing room after one has enjoyed some time in the boudoir, we’d pass over the details that some frivolous minds might find boring. But, as we presume to hope that our books will become, if not during our lifetime then after it, part of society’s standard library, we ask our readers for permission to pass before them, at the beginning of this chapter, a review of the situation in Europe. This will clarify the coming chapters and, in retrospect, illuminate the previous ones.

  During the final years of the reign of Henri IV, and increasing in the early years of Richelieu’s ministry, France not only joined the ranks of the great nations, she became the object upon which all eyes were fixed. Already at the head of the other European kingdoms due to her culture and intelligence, she was about to advance to the same rank in material and martial power.

  Here, in a nutshell, is the state of the rest of Europe.

  We’ll start with that great center of religion, influencing at once Austria, Spain, and France—we’ll start with Rome.

  Ruling over Rome physically and the rest of the Catholic world spiritually is a morose little old man of sixty, born in Florence and glorying in Florentine greed. An Italian first, a prince always, but above all a grasping patriarch, he is forever pondering how to add territory to the Holy See and thus wealth for his many nephews, who include three cardinals—Francis and the two Antonios—as well as a fourth nephew, Thaddeus, general of the Papal troops. Rome has been plundered to feed this nepotism. As Marforio, that Cato, that scourge of the popes, has said, it needed no barbarians to do that, just the Barberini. And indeed, Matteo Barberini, elevated to the papacy as Urban VIII, has reunited the lands of St. Peter under the duchy that bore that saint’s name. Under him, Jesuit propaganda, begun by that good nephew of Gregory XV, Monsignor Ludovico, flourishes and spreads. Under the flag of Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuits have become the world’s religious police, using propaganda as their weapon of conquest. From Rome marches their army of preachers, as gentle in China as they are severe in Europe.

  At the moment, the pope is hoping to contain the Spaniards in their duchy of Milan and keep the Austrians from crossing the Alps, so long as it can be done without personal effort or risk. He presses France to secure Mantua and lift the siege of Casale, but declines to commit one man or a single Roman baiocco to the effort. In his spare time, he revises Church hymns and composes Anacreontic poetry. In 1624, Richelieu had taken his measure, seeing past its pope into the hollowness of Rome, whose dithering politics had already drained it of religious prestige and who borrowed what little strength it had first from Austria, and then from Spain.

  Spain: since the death of Philip III, Spain has hidden its decline behind big words and grand airs. She has for a king Philip IV, brother of Anne of Austria, a lazy sort of monarch who reigns through his prime minister, Count-Duke Olivares, as Louis XIII rules through the Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu. However, where the French minister is a man of genius, the Spanish minister is a mere reckless autocrat. The Spanish West Indies, from which a river of gold rolled during the reigns of Charles V and Philip II, produces under Philip IV only five hundred thousand crowns a year. Meanwhile, Admiral Piet Hein of the United Provinces has captured galleons in the Gulf of Mexico loaded with ingots worth, it’s estimated, over twelve million.

  In her last gasp, Spain is so weak that even the Duke of Savoy, the hunchback Charles-Emmanuel, known derisively as the Prince of Marmots, has twice held in his hand the fate of that empire upon which Charles V boasted the sun never set. Spain has nothing left and can no longer even bankroll Ferdinand II, who complains she sends him no money. The holy bonfires of Philip II, the king of flames, had burned the spirit from a people who once abounded with it, and Philip III, in driving out the Moors, had destroyed the fresh stock that could have revived that spirit. She has leagued herself with the bandits who burned Venice; her greatest general, Spinola, is an Italian mercenary; and her most effective ambassador, Rubens, is a Flemish painter.

  Germany, since the beginning of the Thirty Years War, that is, since 1618, has been a human slaughterhouse, with butchers retailing death in its east, north, west, and center. Anyone desperate to avoid being killed—or turning monk, the suicide of the Middle Ages—has to find a way to buy passage across the Rhine, the Danube, or the Vistula.

  Europe’s eastern marches are held by old Bethlen Gábor, who calls himself King of Hungary and who will die having taken part in forty-two battles, after having invented all those tricks of military costume—the bearskins of the Uhlans, the billowing sleeves of the hussars—which our modern troops use to intimidate each other. His army is the school that teaches all Europe the principles of light cavalry. And what does he promise his recruits? No pay, no food, just whatever they can find to eat and whatever they can take to enrich themselves. He gives them war without law, loot without limits.

  The northern marches are held by Gustavus Adolphus—good-hearted Gustave who, unlike Bethlen Gábor, catches looters and hangs them. This illustrious captain, student of the Frenchman La Gardie, has through his victories in Poland gained the strongholds of Livonia and Polish Prussia. He is occupied at the moment in making an alliance with the German Protestants against Emperor Ferdinand II, the mortal enemy of the Protestants, who despise his Edict of Restitution—that document which will serve as a model for Louis XIV fifty years later when repealing the Edict of Nantes.

  Gustavus Adolphus is the master of his epoch and, in the military arts, the creator of modern warfare. His grand spirit will have no part of the gloom of Coligny, the severity of William the Silent, or the bitter anger of Maurice of Nassau. Unflappable and serene, a smile plays on his lips even in the midst of battle. Six feet tall and broad into the bargain, he rides an enormous horse, and though his obesity is sometimes a problem, it can serve him as well: a bullet that would have killed that lean Genoese Spinola only lodged in Gustave’s fat, which closed over it, never to be seen again.

  The western marches are held by Holland, which is confused and divided against itself. Holland had two heads, Barneveldt and Maurice, and severed them both. Barneveldt, that gentle spirit, was a friend of freedom, but placed peace above all; leader of the provinces and supporter of decentralization (and, therefore, weakness), ambassador to Elizabeth, Henri IV, and James I, when traveling through Brille, Flushing, and Ramekan, was seized as a heretic and traitor and slain on the scaffold.

  It was Maurice of Nassau who’d killed Barneveldt, and though he’d saved Holland ten times over, by this murder he lost his popular support. Prince Maurice wishes to be loved but fears he is hated. One morning, crossing the Gorcum market, he greets the populace with a smile, believing the people will throw their hats in the air and cry happily, “Vive Nassau!” But the people are silent, and their hats stay on their heads.

  From that moment on, he suffers the death of unpopularity. The ever-vigilant sentinel, the captain without fear, becomes a sleepwalker caught in a trance, a dreamer who cannot wake. Maurice is succeeded by his younger brother, Frederick Henry, who handles his inheritance as if buying and selling in a marke
t of men: investing in only a few, but those few well chosen, well clothed, well fed, and regularly paid. A strategist, he occupies the key roads anchored by the remaining marshes, siting his men scientifically, even if that means placing them in knee-deep water. The brave men put up with it, though the thrifty Dutch government, when it sees its soldiers exposed to guns and musketry, cries, “Careful, there! Each of those men represents a capital expense of three thousand francs!”

  But the key battlefield isn’t to the east, the north, or the west. It’s the center of Germany, occupied by a man of doubtful race, a leader of robbers and bandits whom Schiller will later make out to be a hero. Is he a Slav? Is he a German? His round head and blue eyes proclaim him Slavic; his red-blond hair says he’s a German; his olive complexion declares him Bohemian. In fact, this lean, grim captain, who signs himself Wallenstein, was born in the ruins, fires, and massacres of Prague.

  He holds to neither faith nor law. But he does have a belief—or, rather, three. He believes his fate is ruled by the stars. He believes in luck. And he believes in money.

  Wallenstein has established in Europe the reign of the soldier, just as sin established in the world the reign of death. Enriched by warfare, protected by Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II (who will eventually have him assassinated), he is a general wearing the mantle of a prince, though he has neither the serenity of Gustavus nor the agility of Spinola. Bereft of emotion, even anger, he is as insensible to the cries, tears, and complaints of women as he is to the curses, threats, and accusations of men. Worse than that: he treats the world as a contest, and life as a lottery. He lets his soldiers play for any stake: the lives of men, the honor of women, the blood of the people. Now anyone with a whip in his hand may play the prince; anyone with a sword at his side can be a king.

  Richelieu has long studied this demon. In his eulogy for Wallenstein, he cites not the crimes he committed, but the crimes whose commitment he enabled; and to characterize his diabolical amorality, he merely repeated the man’s own words: “As for all that, so what?”

  But the Thirty Years War is not yet through with Germany—far from it. Its first, or Palatine, period ended in 1623 when the Elector Palatine, Frederick V, attempted to assume the crown of Bohemia and was defeated by the Emperor. Now the Danish period is in full swing, as Christian IV, King of Denmark, contends with Wallenstein and Tilly. Not for long: a year from now the war will enter its final, Swedish period.

  So much for Germany. Let’s move on to England.

  Though richer than Spain, England is no less sick. The king is simultaneously at odds with his country and his wife, and quarreling with half of Parliament. Soon he will dissolve his Parliament—though, as with his wife, he’ll want it back again.

  Charles I had married Princess Henriette of France, that daughter of Henri IV who was probably his only true child. Henriette was a lively and witty brunette, seductive rather than agreeable, pretty rather than beautiful, peevish and obstinate, sensual and flirtatious. She’d had a difficult childhood. Brought to England when only seventeen, she’d been escorted there by Bérulle, who’d recommended that she adopt the repentant Mary Magdalene as her model. Compared to France she thought England morose and uncivilized; accustomed to our cheerful and boisterous folk, the English seemed grim and austere. She found her husband lukewarm at best. Danish on his mother’s side, Charles I had a bit of the arctic in his veins. Marriage to a king, especially one so cold, haughty, and disparaging, seemed a penance.

  At least he seemed honest. She tried exerting her power with petty squabbles, but the king always won out. Still unafraid, she became even more difficult, and began to scold.

  The king’s marriage had opened the door to a Catholic invasion. Bérulle, who’d escorted Henriette to her husband, and who’d advised her to emulate Magdalene’s forbearance, knew how much the English had come to hate the “popish” religion. But his new bishop’s hat filled him with zeal and ambition, especially after the weak King James had allowed him to confirm eighteen thousand Catholics in London in one day. Bérulle thought to test his new strength by demanding that, since the children of Catholics were allowed to remain in their mothers’ care until the age of thirteen, and as the young queen had a Catholic bishop, the bishop and his clergy should be allowed to appear in the streets of London in full regalia. When the king granted this request, the queen took it as a sign of weakness, and as a result Charles I found in his bed, instead of a loving wife and grateful subject, a severe and scolding Catholic who wouldn’t submit to the king in the desires of religion—or of the flesh.

  It didn’t stop there. One beautiful May morning, the young queen, accompanied by her bishop, her almoner, and all her women, crossed the length of London to the gallows at Tyburn where, twenty years earlier during the Gunpowder Conspiracy, Father Garnet and his Jesuits had been hanged. There, before the outraged eyes of London, she prayed for the souls of those notorious assassins who, with thirty-six barrels of powder, had planned to blow up the king, his ministers, and Parliament.

  The king was stunned by this public insult to the people and religion of the state. He flew into a violent rage at this commemoration of those who ought to have been forgotten. “Let them be driven away like wild beasts,” he decreed, “these priests and women who would pray at the gallows of murderers!”

  The queen lamented, the queen cried. Her priests cursed the unbelievers and threatened excommunication. Her women wailed like the daughters of Zion being led into slavery, though really they were only being sent back to France. As they were leaving, the queen, wailing in her grief, ran to the window to call out her farewells. Charles I, entering her room at that moment, asked her to refrain from further scandalizing the morals of the English. The queen only cried all the louder. Charles grabbed her around the waist to pull her away from the window, but the queen clung to the bars. Charles dragged her away by force. The queen swooned, lifting her bleeding hands toward the sky to call the vengeance of God down upon her husband.

  God answered on another day when, from another window, this one in Whitehall, King Charles stepped out and walked to the scaffold.

  This quarrel between wife and husband, which prefigured the quarrel between France and England, caused all the queens of Christendom to condemn Charles I as a British Bluebeard. Pope Urban VIII was outraged, and told the Spanish ambassador, “If your master doesn’t draw his sword in defense of this persecuted princess, he’s neither a Catholic nor a gentleman.” Meanwhile the young Queen of Spain, Henriette’s sister, wrote to Cardinal Richelieu, appealing to his nobility to ask him to come to the aid of the oppressed Queen of England. The queen mother and the Infanta of Brussels both appealed to King Louis. Bérulle added his own voice. As you may readily believe, Louis XIII, ever petty and mean of spirit, regarded King Charles’s expulsion of the French from his court as an insult to the French Crown.

  Richelieu alone stood firm in opposition. From this act of resolve came the aid the English would send to the Protestants of La Rochelle, the assassination of Buckingham, the broken heart of Anne of Austria, and the universal league of queens and princesses against Richelieu.

  Now back to Italy, where we will find, in the political situation of Montferrat and Piedmont, and the conflicting interests of the Duke of Mantua and the Duke of Savoy, the explanation of the letters borne by the Comte de Moret to the queen, the queen mother, and Gaston d’Orléans.

  Charles-Emmanuel, the Duke of Savoy, all the more ambitious as his sovereignty was cramped, some years before had violently annexed the Marquisate of Saluzzo. When he couldn’t get France under Henri IV to acknowledge the legitimacy of his conquest, he supported Biron’s conspiracy with Spain against King Henri—which was not only treason against the king, but against the land and country of France, which Biron intended to dismember. The southern provinces were to go to Philip III of Spain, Savoy was to have Lyonnais, Provence, and Dauphiné, while Biron was to get Burgundy and Franche-Comté, with the hand of a Spanish infanta into the bargain.


  The conspiracy was discovered, and Biron was shortened by a head.

  Henri IV would have left Savoy alone if he hadn’t been pushed into war by Austria. The need for money forced him into marriage with Marie de Médicis. Thus funded, he marched on Savoy and defeated the Duke soundly, leaving him the Marquisate of Saluzzo but taking all of Bresse, Bugey, Valromey, the Gex district, both banks of the Rhône from Geneva to Saint-Genix, and finally, Château-Dauphin at the head of the Goito valley.

  Outside of Château-Dauphin, Charles-Emmanuel retained the rest of Piedmont. However, instead of being astride the Alps, he was now confined to their eastern slopes, though he remained master of the passes leading from France to Italy.

  It was on this occasion that our witty King Henri had referred to Charles-Emmanuel as the Prince of Marmots—and the nickname had stuck.

  After that, the Prince of Marmots was an Italian prince, and looked to Italy for further expansion of his state. He made several unsuccessful attempts to do so, until an opportunity presented itself that he regarded as both opportune and predestined.

  Francis IV of the Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua and Montferrat, died, leaving the young princess Marie de Gonzague as the only child from his marriage to Margaret of Savoy, daughter of Charles-Emmanuel.

  The Duke of Savoy claimed the right of governorship of Montferrat in the name of his granddaughter Marie. He hoped to marry Marie to his eldest son, Victor-Amadeus, and reunite Mantua and Montferrat with Piedmont. But Cardinal Ferdinand Gonzaga, brother of the late duke, rushed up from Rome, seized the regency of Mantua, and confined his niece to Goito Castle to keep her from falling into the hands of her maternal uncle.